A Rose Too Many
by Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh
Summary: Humans, animals, plants. All these beings have Aura, as opposite to Grimm. However, what would happen if a young wolf pup were to unlock a very special Semblance... a Semblance that allowed him to turn into a Faunus? And what would happen if this young pup were to be adopted by one Summer Rose and grown as her own child? Well... this.
1. Prologue

**_Okay, here it's 00:00, midnight, of the 8th of February. Aka, my birthday. For you guys it's probably already afternoon or something, but I'm posting this at midnight on my side._**

**_So... this is the prologue. Initially, A Rose Too Many was going to be a Modern AU, but if I am ever going to write that, I'm gonna change its name. This is instead an idea I got from watching Pyrrha's explanation about Aura. How everything not Grimm has Aura because only the Grimm lack of a soul. Not going to spoil anything else though._**

**_Well, I am happy to have managed to write this. These days I've been sick, plus other bad stuff happened, so I really wasn't sure. Up until a hour or so ago, let's make it two, this chapter was literally half what it is now. I was on the verge of going 'fuck it' and keep it short, but thankfully my stubbornness won over in the end, and it's 4.1 k words. A little less than my new standard of 4.4k for Extension, DarkerShade, and Redemption, but hey, I can't win in all the fields._**

**_Enjoy! ^^_**

Summer Rose was returning home early.

At the young age of six, Ruby Rose could still not understand many of the subtle hints that social interaction entailed. However, she could recognize visible relief when it washed over her dad's face, and she could see how Uncle Qrow seemed to sit a little straighter in his chair. Across the table from the little Rose, Yang perked up a bit. However, all that was nothing when compared to how much Ruby herself brightened up. Mommy would come back sooner from her mission, and that was incredibly good news! She even stopped downing cookies to let out a little squeal of joy.

Mom almost never returned earlier from a mission! If anything, she had to choose short missions because somehow, there always ended up being more and stronger Grimm than what the mission summary had entailed!

"When will she be home?!" Ruby cried excitedly. "Tomorrow? In two days?"

Her father smiled and ruffled her hair. "No, sweetheart, even better. She said she's already on her way back. Whatever the reason, she asked a couple of other Hunters to continue her mission since she had to come back home, so she will remain here for a good while! She should arrive tonight, or tomorrow at the latest."

"Yiiippiiieeee!" With another squeal, Ruby inhaled the rest of her cookies and began to zip around the room as fast as she could, making her father chuckle.

"We're lucky you still don't have Aura, or you'd cause a disaster every time you get excited," laughed the man, catching the cookie tray before it could fall.

"Is Mom okay?" Yang asked, a bit worried.

"I'm sure she is, Little Dragon," her father smiled at her. "She seemed calm enough, and she said she was fine, not even a little injury. You know how awesome your mom is."

Yang looked at him for a few more seconds before she grinned and continued to eat her breakfast, cereals in chocolate milk. "Yep! The awesomest mom in the world!"

"That's right," chuckled Qrow, screwing the cap back on his flask and putting it away. "Summer was our leader after all, and we would never allow a spineless fighter to be our leader!"

"But still, hurry up Yang, you have school soon," Taiyang reminded his eldest daughter, currently eight years old, who groaned miserably. "Come on, it's not that bad. Once you turn ten, we will unlock your Aura and start homeschooling you, so you'll enter Signal when you'll be twelve, but you need to hang on for two more years. Is being trained by your awesome dad worth going to school for two years?"

"No," Qrow replied flatly, making Yang giggle and Tai sigh. "But being trained by her cool uncle is! I'm gonna teach her how to hack baddies to pieces with an awesome weapon!"

"She takes after me, Qrow, she'll be an unarmed fighter," scoffed the father.

"Blasphemy!" Little Ruby stopped zipping around and pointed a finger at her father. "Blasphemy, I say! Everyone needs an awesome weapon!"

Qrow cackled while Tai groaned and face-palmed before glowering at his own teammate and best friend. "You corrupted my sweet little rose, didn't you?" he mock growled to amuse his daughters. "Ah, the betrayal! My own teammate, stabbing me when I less expect it! You turned my own flesh and blood against me!"

"Don't be so dramatic," countered the dark-haired man. "Consider this payback for the time you made me wear a skirt."

"Hey, I got you attention from the ladies! Weren't you the one who wanted to get snatched up by a pretty girl?"

"Daaaad!" whined Ruby. "Stop! Girls and boys together like that is icky!"

"Is girls and girls or boys and boy any better?" inquired Yang, a little curious.

"No!"

"Now, now, girls, let's not use this discussion to skip out on your duties. Ruby, you go and wash your teeth. Yang, get ready to leave for school in five." Tai narrowed his eyes at the two. "And no hiding in the closet like yesterday, okay?"

Both girls groaned.

/-/

"Tai! Ruby! Yang! I'm home!"

"Mooooooooooom!"

The redhead woman giggled as she was hit by two coloured blurs, one red and one yellow, the second she stepped through the threshold and made her presence known. "I thought you two'd be in bed by now."

A huff was heard before Qrow appeared from a door, panting heavily. "Yeah… sure… you try… to make them… go to bed… when you… are coming… back early."

Summer smirked at her teammate before narrowing her eyes at her daughters. "You two… you've been stressing Tai and Qrow out, haven't you?"

"It's two hours they can't stop moving," groaned her teammate. "Two hours. Honestly, from where do they even take so much energy? Taiyang's comatose on the couch…" He sighed before shaking his head and focusing on the woman, who was still hugging the two girls. "Anyway, what brings you to this humble abode, my lady? I thought your mission would take several more days at the very least. Not that I'm not happy to give up babysitting, of course."

Summer smiled. "I know you love babysitting them," she laughed before her smile dropped. "Well… when your Semblance doesn't act up too much, of course."

"Mom, for how long will you be staying?" Ruby asked from… somewhere pressed into her mother's cloak.

The woman chuckled warmly, wrapping her daughters in another hug. "For quite some time, I think. I have incredible news for all of you, and for Tai as well. Ruby, Yang, you'll have a new brother!" A strangled exclamation could be heard by the adjacent room, followed by a yelp and a crash. "I found him while I was on mission, and since he had lost his family, I decided to bring him home with me. Although he only trusts me, so that's why I cannot go on other missions anytime soon. He would just follow me."

Taiyang appeared at the doorway, rubbing his head, relief clearly written all over his face. "Oh, so you didn't mean…"

"No, Tai, I am not pregnant," laughed Summer, amused by her husband's clear relief. Then she detached her daughters from her and walked back to the door, scanning the darkness outside. "Jaune! Come here, I want to introduce you to my pack!"

"Your… pack?" asked Qrow, frowning.

"Wait, and you'll see," smiled the woman before kneeling and returning to look for any sign of this 'Jaune'. "He is pretty shy around new people, but there shouldn't be a problem with meeting you. As long as you're friendly with him… Oh, here he is! Jaune! My pack is here!"

Ruby and Yang both peered from behind the woman as a young wolf pup cautiously made its way to the house. It was too young to pose a threat to anyone, much less a Huntress like Summer, so Taiyang and Qrow were more confused than wary.

Summer, though, did not share their confusion, and neither did her daughters, if their twin squeals of joy were anything to go by. Preventing them from running up to the little wolf, Summer offered a hand and smiled, "Come on, Jaune, don't be afraid. They are my pack, and now they are your pack too."

"Wait, _that_ is 'Jaune'?" asked Qrow, glancing at Summer. "I thought you said a new _brother_, not a new _pet_."

"You'll understand later, for now let's just have him get acquainted with you," replied the woman, still waving the wolf closer.

Slowly, the animal moved up to the door, still wary of the other humans but not as much as Qrow or Taiyang would've thought. He seemed to be careful, not but hostile nor on the defensive. "Is he used to being around humans?" asked Taiyang, scratching his head.

"Yes he is, or at least he got used to it." Summer finally managed to get a hold of the wolf and dragged him in, ignoring his surprised yelp. "Here! Jaune, this is my pack: my mate Taiyang, my pack brother Qrow, and my pups, Ruby and Yang. Guys, this is Jaune, my new son!"

"Hi!" both girls said at once, both eager to meet at the young pup. Yang's grin was the wider one of the two. "He's so cute, he is like a dog pup… but better!"

Summer laughed as she stroked Jaune's dark fur, trying to calm him down. As it turned out, there was no need, as the wolf's dark blue eyes were staring at Summer's 'pups' without fear. When the woman released him, the young wolf slowly trudged up to the two and pushed his nose into Yang's hair, making her giggle.

Two minutes later, the wolf was on his back, enjoying belly rubs from both his new pack sisters, much to the amusement of the adults. The young wolf, as Summer repeatedly reassured, was dangerous only in terms of chaos he could create, but even then both girls could bring far more mayhem than he ever could. He was too young to really have claws, and his teeth tickled more than hurt.

As the children played, the adults watched them from the couch Taiyang had crashed on earlier. "So," began Qrow. "What's with the story of him being their new brother?"

"Jaune has Aura," explained Summer. "I unlocked it when I accidentally injured him. I was fighting some Grimm and when I killed one, it fell on the poor wolf. I felt guilty so I unlocked his Aura to let it heal him, but then he began following me around. I think his pack was killed by the Grimm in the area."

"So, to avoid getting him killed, you ended the mission and brought him home?" asked her husband.

"Well… it is not that simple, actually. I continued my mission for a while, but I also taught Jaune how to behave. He was very fierce when I found him. He may be a pup, but he really tried to lick me to death after I saved him." The adults chuckled slightly. "Yes, that was adorable. Anyway, he continuously followed me around, and he even helped me during the mission. Nothing much, of course, he just helped me drag a couple of people out of a collapsed house."

"He looks a bit too small to do that," Taiyang pointed out.

Summer sighed and nodded her head as she watched her children play, including her 'new son'. "That's when his Semblance comes in."

Qrow and Tai exchanged a glance. "His… Semblance?" asked the former. "He has one?"

Summer nodded. "Yes he does. All being with Aura can have Semblances, even though it's far rarer for animals to unlock it." She weakly rubbed her forehead. "The point is _what_ his Semblance is. Jaune, come here for a second, please."

The wolf whined, but a stern look from the woman made him stand up on four legs and walk to the couch where the adults stood. Unfastening her cloak, Summer draped it on the wolf so that only his head was visible. Ruby and Yang giggled at the sight of the caped wolf, and the animal didn't seem pleased about that, something that only made them laugh more.

"Jaune, please, use your Semblance," Summer spoke softly, caressing the wolf's ears.

He nodded his head in response, and soon after a soft white glow surrounded him. The light wasn't particularly strong, it would've barely lit a small room, but it completely hid the wolf from view. A soft whine was heard and Summer reached out to pet his head through the glow. "Come on, Jaune, don't be afraid."

The light soon died down, but when it did, Taiyang and Qrow gasped and fell off the couch. Yang and Ruby quickly ran over to see what had happened, and they squeed at the sight before them. Summer sighed at the adults' reactions, having expected something similar, but she was inwardly amused by their shock. At the same time, she was also happy her daughters had taken it well.

For now, wrapped in the white cloak, there was no more a wolf, but a little boy no older than Yang. His eyes were exactly like when he was a wolf, thus kinda eerie on a human face, and his straw-coloured hair fell down on his eyes, making him peek at them from under his blond bangs. His skin was pale, very much so, arriving to compete with Ruby's, but not unhealthily so. He also had furry wolf ears on the top of his head, and his teeth seemed to be ever so slightly more pointy than normal. He was also very very naked, though Summer kept the cloak wrapped around his frame, but he didn't seem to care. A black wolf tail stuck out from the cloth, moving slightly as the boy hopped from one feet to the other, not liking the cold tile floor.

Summer could swear that Qrow's and Tai's jaws had unhinged themselves for how much they were gaping open-mouthed. She chuckled as she ruffled the wolf-boy's hair. "Indeed, little Jaune here surprised me too when he used his Semblance for the first time. I had been denied access to an inn because of him in wolf form, and he had noticed. My guess is that he unlocked it to be allowed in the local."

"B-But… but that's impossible!" exclaimed Taiyang, looking at the boy with wide eyes.

"Aww, he's cuter when he's a puppy," Yang complained with a pout while Ruby was rubbing his ears to feel them. "Can he turn back?"

"Of course he can. Jaune, wolf." Another white glow surrounded the boy, but this time it also travelled up Ruby's arm, who yelped and leapt back into her sister. Summer sighed as they waited for the glow to be over. When it did, she took her cloak back to show that Jaune was back in his wolf form. "He can only understand a few words I've taught him, like his name, 'pack', 'Semblance' and 'wolf'. I think that despite him having a Faunus form, it'd still be better to also teach him how to be a wolf, so we'll need to teach him that too."

"But… how can this be possible?" asked Qrow. "How can an animal turn into a person? Does he become as intelligent as a human or does he remain animal in mind?"

"He seemed very intelligent even before he unlocked his Semblance. I am not sure if this is because of me unlocking his Aura, but he definitely behaved differently from other animals," Summer explained as the wolf went back to being squeed upon by the two girls. She smiled at the sight. "I thought of bringing him here. Yang and Ruby are too sweet to be afraid of him, and a family will be good for him. But at the same time, we are all adults who have seen their fair share of weirdness, so if there are problems, we would be the best suited for the task."

"Should we tell this to Ozpin?" asked her husband.

"Of course we should!" Qrow butted in tactlessly. "This is… this is… this is unheard of! Completely unbelievable! Ozpin should know about this _asap_!"

"No!" Summer dipped her head when her shout had everyone stare at her. Fearing she was distressed, Jaune stood up and trotted up to her, resting his head on her leg. She sighed and caressed his fur. "Ozpin may be knowledgeable, but he's cold. Very very cold. He might know how to help us, but I have no doubts he would try to 'recruit' even unsuspecting animals for his missions."

"You mean… _her_?" asked Qrow.

"Who?" Taiyang frowned when neither answered. "Hey, you may be my wife and my best friend but that doesn't give you the right to just ignore me!"

"Don't worry Dad, it happens all the time," Yang comforted him. "Whenever you and Mom are arguing in the bedroom, and I or Ruby come to tell you we can't sleep because of the noise, we always have to wait until you're done arguing before you listen."

"Arguing?" repeated the man.

"Yeah, you scream and there are lots of noise, what would you be doing if not arguing?" asked Yang.

"Tomorrow we'll give you The Talk, sweetie, and we'll explain everything," Summer cut in swiftly before turning to Qrow. "But yes, _her_. If he finds out… if anyone else finds out… Jaune would not grow up happy, and all the other animals wouldn't either. We cannot do something like this."

"But if it allows us to succeed…"

"Qrow, humanity has survived without animals fighting for them for millennia," Summer rebuked angrily. "I'm not gonna allow the Council to take advantage of that, nor I will let that paranoid do the same 'for the greater good'. I am sick of that excuse."

"But it is true!" retorted the man.

"Both of you, stop. You're scaring the children." Taiyang picked up both his daughters and placed each on one of his legs, Yang on his left and Ruby on his right. "Now, it's far too late to discuss this, whatever 'this' is. Why don't we all go to bed?"

"Can Jaune sleep with me?" Yang asked innocently.

"No, with me!" protested Ruby, pouting.

"You can all sleep in the same bed for tonight, if it makes you feel better," smiled their father. "Tomorrow we'll start adapting to having three children instead of two."

"In terms of beds it won't be much of a problem," shrugged Summer, still absent-mindedly petting the wolf's head. "I had him sleep curled up with me since I feared he would wander off on his own during the night. He still tried, but at least it woke me up."

"Should we worry about him being a nighttime presence?" asked Taiyang. "Because frankly, when he'll be a little older, seeing a wolf wandering in the house at night is gonna be creepy even for me."

"Today he's too tired for that anyway, but I honestly don't know. Sleeping with me, he never really got the chance to. If he doesn't sleep during the day, he won't have energies to stay awake at night." As if on cue, Jaune yawned widely, exposing his small fangs. "See? But if he does… well, it's better to start warning our guests."

"Heh, that'd be a sight to see," snorted Qrow, shaking his head in amusement. "When Yang'll start bringing boys home, you could 'accidentally' forget to warn them, and watch as they piss themselves in fear."

"When Yang'll be old enough, she'll be going at Signal, and any boy she might bring home is gonna be a fighter, even if not a good one," Taiyang reminded him. "He might instead hurt Jaune, maybe severely so."

"And you think we are not going to train him too?" Summer smiled slightly. "Oh no, we absolutely need to. Not only that, he's already proven his hatred for the Grimm, so keeping him away from fighting is going to be very difficult."

"Really? Why does he hate them?"

"Well, he hates Beowolves and Gorehorns," shrugged the woman, and at the mere mention, the wolf seemed to pout. "I think he hates Beowolves because they are the abomination of wolves, so he despises them."

"And Gorehorns?" asked Taiyang. "I mean, they are Grimm deer, so they aren't really related to wolves. Prey, maybe, but I doubt he would consider a Gorehorn 'prey'."

Summer looked sheepish at that, and looked away with a cough. "I… Well… the Grimm that fell on him _might_ have been a Gorehorn…"

"Oh, so it's revenge, heh," chuckled Qrow, ruffling the wolf's head. "The pup's got fire, it seems."

"I said he hates them, not that he fights them head-on. It's just that when I fought them, he seemed to be cheering me on," remarked the woman, but no one listened. Yang and Ruby had dozed off on Tai's legs, and Jaune seemed about to follow their example. _'Children instincts,'_ she smiled. _'They always fall asleep together.'_ "Well, let's get these sleepyheads into bed, shall we?"

"Yeah, and I've better get going," groaned the dark-haired man as he stood up and stretched. "I'd like not to stick around for when you two decide to _argue_ some more in your room."

"There is something else too," added Summer, snatching his arm before he could flee. "Jaune's Semblance is… extendable."

"What do you mean 'extendable'?" asked her husband.

"I mean that hadn't Ruby removed her hand earlier, she would've turned into a wolf too." The two men gaped at her in shock, and then at the wolf. "I cannot say if the effect is temporary or not, he panicked and immediately reverted the process the one time it happened, but he can."

"That's…" Qrow hit the side of his head as if to clear his ear from water. "That's way more than just unbelievable. How did you feel?"

"Well, honestly it was too brief to really remember, but I felt… normal, I guess. Just on all fours rather than upright, and covered in fur." Summer grinned. "I'm sure I was a beautiful wolf though."

"And how long can he last in Faunus form?" asked Taiyang. "Maybe if he has a limit, then the people he turns into wolves have that limit too. Like, an hour, or two…"

"Honestly, I don't know." Summer bent slightly and picked up the now sleeping wolf, whose tail wagged slightly in his sleep as she rubbed his belly. "He always did it purposefully, and I never saw him run out of Aura. He does have a lot of it, but I don't think his Semblance uses Aura. Like yours, Qrow. Yours is passive, and it never uses Aura."

"Mine is a special case," Qrow pointed out.

"But still, it isn't unheard of for Semblances to either take a miniscule amount of Aura to work, so small it refills almost instantly, or none at all." The woman shook her head and sighed. "Let's just get them to bed now. It has been a long day, and I'm sure you both still have questions, so we'll have to stay awake even longer."

Accepting her temporary pause, Qrow took Ruby from Taiyang and the three of them headed upstairs. Fitting the three young ones in a single bed did not turn out to be a particularly difficult task. If anything, the three of them seemed fan of cuddles. Ruby, the smaller one, was in the middle, with Yang embracing her right side and Jaune curled up on her left. Two different races, yet the three children seemed not to care about each other's race. Jaune was a little used to sleeping with Summer, but that didn't mean he was used to sleeping with humans in general.

The woman was thankful he didn't seem to be worried about sleeping with someone else than her. That could've been quite the problem, especially since she couldn't exactly kick Tai out of the bed just because Jaune was afraid of sleeping with him nearby. Not that she'd never kicked Tai out of bed before, but it was still better if Jaune could sleep with someone else and, with time, learn to sleep on his own without wandering around in the night. Especially not in wolf form.

Summer chuckled. Yes, having a wolf wandering at night in the house was really going to be a problem. She was going to teach him how to be human, or rather Faunus, but she also wanted him to grow up as… well, as a wolf. She'd allow him to roam in the forests outside in wolf form if so he wished. Who knew, maybe he'd end up teaching something to _them_ too.

_'After all, he __**is**__able to turn other people into wolves. It is indeed a chance. Maybe we could all turn into wolves and try how it is to be wolves?'_ She laughed silently at the thought of Qrow as wolf. The mental image of a pouting dark grey wolf trying to drink from a flask flashed through her mind, and she doubled over trying not to let out a sound lest she woke the children. _'Yes, we are definitely going to use his Semblance both ways. Even just for that, it's too hilarious not to do that. I wonder if Yang and Ruby will like it though. Being turned into wolves might be traumatic for them… but if I am going to do this, it's better if I start soon. Later might be too late, even if it's just a few years.'_

She smiled as she imagined her 'pack' running through the woods. She knew the colours were probably wrong, but she thought she'd be a large white wolf, while Taiyang and Yang would be golden ones, and Ruby would have a reddish shade to her own fur.

_'Yeah, we are definitely going to do this.'_

**_So, explanations._**

**_Pyrrha said how even animals have Aura, and Zwei definitely has it (his Semblance is Invincibility, of course). So I thought what would've happened if an animal with Aura happened to awaken his Semblance, and for his Semblance to be... turning human, or at least part-human, or part-Faunus? Here Jaune definitely looks more wolfish than a wolf Faunus._**

**_And thus, this idea was born._**

**_As for why Summer doesn't want to tell Ozpin, it's because of course Ozpin would rush to use all the animals in the world against Salem. But Summer is a smart cookie. If things never changed for millennia, why enslave animals just 'for the greater good'. This 'for the greater good' is more or less the only motivation Ozpin has to do stuff. I'm not saying he is in the wrong, mind me, just that from other people's point of view, he would seem quite paranoid and maniac._**

**_Hehe, the part with Summer imagining Qrow as a wolf was fun to write. ^^_**

**_Anyway, unfortunately I will make a timeskip to much later, more or less to Beacon, in the next chapter. It would be pointless to write the daily life of the new Rose-Xiao Long 'pack', so I won't. There are some parts I would've liked to write (like Tai's prediction to come true with the first time Yang brings a boy home, hehe), but eventually they are few and far in-between, too far and few to actually make a good chapter. I hate to use timeskips in a chapter, so either I wrote very short chapters, like 2k or something, or I skipped to Beacon and recalled events from the past later._**

**_Of course, Ruby and Yang will be slightly different from canon, heh._**

**_Now, why a wolf? Because the wolf fits Jaune to a T. Maybe use Ruby as Wolf Faunus, but think about it: wolves are very social animals, they live and do everything in packs, and are weak on their own. Yes, they are. Despite popular belief, a healthy adult can win against a wolf, barehanded, if they are smart enough to not allow the wolf to tear their throats out. A wolf is essentially a wild big dog._**

**_Ruby is not social, and is definitely not weak on her own. Heck, at least in Initiation with Weiss, it shows how she actually is not good at teamwork, disrupting Weiss's attack to hit the Beowolf._**

**_Jaune, instead? He may be socially awkward, but he does befriend Ruby, and despite all his self-esteem problems he start a conversation with Weiss without the slightest hesitation. He also shows teamwork skills, at least at knowing when he's useless and thus not trying to butt in. And while in V2 and V3 we see him fighting a little, he definitely is weak compared to the rest, thus filling in the third criterium._**

**_Ruby might be... dunno, hummingbird? A lone predator maybe?_**

**_Anyway, it's almost time for me to post this, so let's upload it on FFN first._**

**_Until next time,_**

**_Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh._**


	2. Adapting

**_Ugh, translating is hard... oh well, here I am with A Rose Too Many Ch2! I know I said I wouldn't do timeskips, but eventually I decided that skipping straight to Beacon would've been too sudden. Instead, I will reach V1 or so in the next chapter. Sorry._**

It had been a dark, but thankfully devoid of clouds, night in Patch. There were a few people in the streets, but they were like shadows – plain and unworthy of being even remembered. In a small wood cabin isolated from the rest of the houses and hidden by the trees, the first rays of dawn had just begun to pierce the morning haze, painting the wooden walls of a lovely golden pink shade. A very gentle breeze was rustling through the leaves, caressing the feathers of the birds perched on the branches.

The birds weren't singing, though. Rather, they were watching three young ones playing in the grass. One was a long-haired blond girl with a yellow t-shirt and brown shorts, who was throwing a stick for a young wolf to retrieve. The third young one was a girl with black hair fading into red at the tips, wearing a red t-shirt and grey pants, who was awkwardly riding on the wolf's back as he played.

Had the birds been capable of expressing their thoughts in human words, they would've probably wondered aloud what the hell was going on. Living near the Rose-Xiao Long residence had always been full of surprise, but to see two races so different play together like children of the same mother was a new one even for them.

Little did they know most of those birds would relocate in a few years, after the two girls would have their Aura unlocked as well, and the level of mayhem would increase too much for the birds to continue living around there.

The birds were also confused. They were familiar with the sight of the two girls playing, but the wolf was a new addition. Not just that, the two girls were also up unusually early that day, probably due to the wolf having dragged them out of bed. Quite literally in the black-and-red-haired girl's case. Why the two girls had allowed a dangerous predator like a wolf to drag them out to play was beyond the birds' level of understanding.

Eventually, the front door opened and a taller and older version of the third young, the black-and-red-haired girl, appeared on the threshold. She spoke to the children in the weird language all humans shared, but no animal could really understand. The sounds were loud and primitive even though they had a certain musicality to them.

The two females stopped playing immediately and ran back into the wood cabin with twin squees of delight, while the wolf trotted behind them, showing his happiness by wagging his tail. The older version of the younger female closed the door behind him, and finally the birds could have their peace at last.

Chirping excitedly among themselves, they all confirmed to have seen it right, the humans had taken in a wolf pup. Their friends down in the city would never believe it when they would be told in the afternoon. But first, they had to eat their fill of berries and whatnot. It was never good to talk on an empty stomach.

Birds were always incredibly fond of gossiping among themselves. And to think, humans thought they were singing.

/-/

After a healthy breakfast, for which Jaune had been forced to turn human to eat like Ruby and Yang, Summer decided it was time for a bath. And not just a normal bath, but the bath father of all baths. While Yang was technically old enough to use the shower on her own at a whooping eight years of age, Ruby still preferred baths, and Summer heavily doubted Jaune would learn how to use a shower anytime soon.

And Summer had never been able to bathe him during her mission. Not because of lack of trying, of course, the woman had tried many times. It was more because of lack of cooperation.

"Tai, keep him still for Dust's sake I got water and soap in my eyes!"

Ruby giggled as her Uncle Qrow tried to wash the soapy water on his face off with more soapy water, ending up looking a bit like a foamy snowman's face. Her father tried and failed to keep a wriggling Jaune in semi-human form from jumping out of the bath, and the boy ran for the door, only for his new mother and alpha to grab him and pull him back in the bathtub. The little Rose giggled again as the boy's contortions sprayed everyone with more water, even herself.

All the adults were in their underwear, for two main reasons. One was because their clothes would've gotten _soaked_ in the process, and two because Jaune's claws were just enough to latch onto the fabric, and they didn't want him to hurt himself trying to pull his hands away. Also, Jaune was good at ripping cloth, as it turned out when Qrow had first refused to remove his shirt. A shirt that now had a large tear through its front.

However, the lack of clothes also made it all the harder to keep a grip on the slick skin of the boy, and no one of them even considered trying to grab his tail or his ears out of fear of hurting him. This, though, just made their job even harder.

Ruby was sitting in one end of the bathtub, looking at the mess that was her new brother's bath while she washed herself. She was a big girl, after all, she knew how to wash herself. Her mom's glare when she tried to skip on washing also helped.

The soap was everywhere. Ruby didn't really mind, but she was pretty sure the ceiling wasn't supposed to have large splotches of white foam contrasting nicely with the sky blue paint, kinda like fluffy clouds. The walls too were adorned by the new addition, and the mirror above the sink was dripping with soapy water. A good half inch of water covered the floor, with foam islands floating around while more water and soap fell on it constantly due to the struggle in the bathtub. A hand grabbed her wrist and she happily allowed it to drag her in the mess.

"Ruby, not you too!"

Ignoring his new father's groan, Jaune used Ruby as a human shield, pulling her in the mess and trying to escape while the adults had a moment of distraction. Taking advantage of the fact Qrow still had soap in his eyes, he pushed past his legs, only to be grabbed by Taiyang. However, his alpha's mate's sudden move upset Qrow's already unstable balance, making him tumble forwards. Summer tried to grab him, but instead she missed and grabbed a giggling Ruby, just before receiving a wave of soap and water in the face thanks to Qrow landing in the bathtub.

Pulling Jaune back, Taiyang barely had time to react before Jaune glowed white, and he immediately removed his hand lest he turned into a wolf too. The pup assaulted his ankles with bites that would've tickled an Auraless man and nothing more, and Taiyang took a step back to grab the wolf. However, bending forwards was his downfall, literally, as his foot slipped off the soapy floor and he basically somersaulted into Summer, pushing her into the bathtub as well and causing an enormous amount of water to splash out. Ruby broke out in full-blown child laughter as the little wolf skidded across the tiled floor and ran out of the bathroom, still drenched in water and with foamy fur.

The three adults stared at the bathroom's door.

"Summer, remind me, Jaune's Semblance is turning into a wolf, and _only_ that, right?"

"Yes."

"Then explain how the hell this has just happened."

"I don't know, Qrow, I don't know."

/-/

Bathing Jaune required several more attempts, and a fair bit of time, as well as enough frustration for Grimm to feast on for several years. The three adults had actually used that as an excuse to go out and take out their negativity on innocent Grimm. And when they returned, it was already lunch time. Incredible how fast time flew by when they were having fun.

For lunch, they ate meat and cheese burgers. Summer, Tai and Qrow also added salad, tomatoes and sliced onion in theirs, but Jaune was still not used to eat many vegetables. Bread and cheese seemed to be already something he didn't enjoy as much as the hamburger. Ruby and Yang were allowed not to put any salad or tomatoes in theirs to keep it fair, and they had devoured the meal with gusto. The adults had a laugh when Yang had cleaned the corner of Jaune's mouth with her thumb, scooping up a bit of meat, and had tried to lick it off her finger, only for the wolf boy to chomp down on the finger. Thankfully he had not bitten hard enough to hurt her, but it had still been funny to see Yang yelp and whip her hand back.

Finally, after lunch, Yang went out to play with her friends, while Ruby played with Jaune outside, and the adults had some time to relax again. Well, relatively so. An adult's life was always busy, no matter what the children thought. When Qrow stayed in a bar for hours at a time, drinking and drinking until his wallet was empty, the children didn't know he was actually blending in and building up tolerance and resistance. When Taiyang was busy reading one of his pun books, the children didn't know he was actually improving his mental awareness by remaining awake through all those puns. When Summer took a stroll through the woods, the children didn't know she was actually training herself to resist long days of marching.

Even Summer and Taiyang's _arguing_ was a good physical exercise to work up a sweat.

So, even when the adults relaxed, they were actually pondering extremely important topics.

For once, it was the truth.

"So, how are we going to do this?" asked Taiyang, holding a glass of cold orange juice in his hands. "I mean, there's a lot that Jaune needs to be taught. Speaking, all the human language actually, how to behave, and no less importantly all the more scholastic topics like Maths and stuff. How are we going to do that, _and_ also grow him up like a wolf?"

"I honestly don't know," sighed Summer, holding her own glass, hers of milk. "Wolves are not common here in Patch… we might leave it to instincts, because Jaune does not have any real wolf to teach him, and no one of us is qualified to teach him that… But for the rest of the topics, it won't be too hard. We will homeschool him, of course, but that was a given. With his animal traits, he would be target of even more hatred than the Faunus…"

"Yeah, that might become a problem in the future. I mean, Faunus only have one animal trait, and they are already hated. Jaune… Well, let's count, ears, tail, eyes, teeth and claws. Anything else?" Qrow slumped when Summer raised a hand. "Something _else_? Jeez, first day and I'm already sick of this…"

"His senses are far sharper than normal. All in all, he's a Faunus, with even more animal traits, and possibly even sharper senses," replied Summer. "But that's not exactly the only reason why we should keep him away from other people until he's learned enough to understand what we say, because he too will need to keep the secret. We told Yang not to tell anyone, but that's only the beginning."

"Are you saying we should just keep him away from people his whole life?" asked Taiyang, looking at her wide-eyed. "But… but… but that's awful! Besides, he's around Yang's age, he needs social interaction with other children!"

"He's also a wolf, and thus he just needs to interact with his pack. Also… Jaune is not eight." Summer looked away and out of the window, though she couldn't see the two children playing outside, Jaune being back in his wolf form. "He's less than one year old, Tai."

Silence stretched between them for a second before the men pulled themself back together. "Less than a year old, you say?" repeated Qrow.

"Wolves grow up much faster than humans, Qrow. I've had him with me for almost a month now and his growth seemed to have slowed immensely, making me think he is now growing at a human's pace, but I don't think he's more than three months old." Summer placed her milk down and rubbed her forehead. "He's not _seen_ the world at all. Everything's new for him, I think that when I found him, it was his first time seeing Grimm. Wolves are born in Spring and in Autumn they start joining the adults in their hunts. At one year of age they are adults and they usually start mating at two. Jaune may _look_ eight and he may be anatomically speaking similar to an eight-year-old human, but he has the experience of just a few months in the wilds."

In the following silence, Qrow took a long swig from his flask, and then another, and then another. At the third, he also took a look at Summer's glare, and wisely decided to lay off the alcohol for the rest of their little 'meeting'. "Well, I guess that can't be helped then, you two must suck it up and keep him here. Though that might be easier than you'd think…"

"People are gonna talk if they hear we are keeping a child closed in our house," replied Taiyang. "They're gonna talk no matter what."

"So you let them talk, and they will give you a solid fake backstory for your new 'son'," shrugged his old teammate. "You say he's a Faunus you've found whose Semblance allows him to turn into a wolf, but has the passive trait of making him look more animal-like. You might also say that it influences his personality too."

"That would make him be seen as a madman," Summer pointed out, trying and failing to keep an accusing growl out of her voice.

"Not if you play your cards right. You say he's recently unlocked it and since he's very young, he's having problems mastering it," Qrow noted triumphantly. "I mean, students in Signal go through stuff like that all the time when they unlock their Semblance. Raven randomly opened portals, sometimes surprising me when I was in the bathroom for example. Glynda caused mass destruction. Oobleck smashed into so many walls, remember? The Green Wallbane, we called him, but it was normal. You too, Summer, had problems with your superspeed, remember? I quite well remember you telling me that your first time using your Semblance ended up with you puking even your soul and with the mother of all migraines. At such a young age, people won't find it weird for him not to have his Semblance mastered. They won't like him, true, but they will understand… they will buy your lie _easily_."

"I don't want to make my son's existence a gigantic _lie_!" Summer exclaimed outraged, glowering at her teammate. "That's going to give him so many problems in the future, can't you see it?"

"Not if he knows the truth, and tells the ones he is close to about it. Besides, it's not like lying to people makes you feel bad, it's just not telling the whole truth." Qrow grinned at her in a way that made her just want to take her weapons and wipe that grin off his face with her blades. "And didn't you say he only needs interactions with his pack?"

"Are you using my own words against me?"

"Truly despicable, am I?"

"Just stop it you two," Taiyang cut in quite harshly. "We don't have any solution beside Qrow's. I am truly sorry Sum, but until we get a better idea, we _must_ stick to this."

"Trying to get Jaune to bathe was a thousand times better," mumbled the woman.

"Also, this is not the only thing we have to discuss now," added her husband, taking out a notepad and a pen. "You great professional thrill-seeker Hunters probably won't understand a word of what a poor househusband like me is about to tell you, but Summer, we currently cannot afford to take Jaune in, we'll have to make more money."

"I can go on more missions," offered Summer.

"No, honey, that's _absolutely_ a big, fat no," he frowned at her. "You already spend so much time on those missions, Sum. Your children want you _in_ their lives, not you _paying_ for their lives. Quite the opposite. I'm sorry, but from now on you need a _stable_ job. For a while, no more going on missions whenever we're short of money or whatever."

Summer bit her lip.

"I know what you're thinking, and that's an even worse idea," Tai admonished her with the same voice a parent would use when they caught a children trying to steal a cookie from the cookie jar. "More dangerous missions are off the chart too. I am talking about a serious, stable, _contract_ job. Like mine at Signal. Plus you said it yourself yesterday, you need to stay home for a while because Jaune needs you here. Well, let's change that 'for a while' into a 'for quite a while'."

"But missions pay more?" Summer offered weakly.

Taiyang firmly shook his head. "No. The girls already miss you every time you go on a mission, Sum. I miss you too. And that's without counting the fact that Hunters die on missions every week. I have faith in you, I really do, but if you continue to go on missions, one day even your skill will be eclipsed by something you won't be able to defeat. A stable job is, if not better and safer, at least way closer to home. You'll be home every night, and if we play our cards right, you'll even have enough time to spend with the girls. The same time you already have. Instead of crammed in the space of a few days, a week or two, it will be diluted onto more days, but the time itself won't change. Hell, I'd say you'd have to actually work less!"

"But I'm not really good with jobs…" she pointed out. "I mean, there _is_ a reason why I only take missions. Aside from helping others and enjoying being a Huntress, of course, but I'm not one to just sit there and work."

"Neither was I, at first," her husband replying gently, putting away the notepad and placing a hand over hers. "But I learned, and so will you."

"Will you two lovebirds cut it out, or should I make myself scarce in case you two start getting it on?" Qrow's voice cut through the air like the screech of a tyre on the asphalt, loud and unwelcome. Sighing, the two separated their hands and turned to their teammate. "Seriously, you've been married for seven years and yet you still act like two newlyweds."

"Qrow… ugh, just shut up."

"No can do, Tai, you're not my leader," grinned the man. "Now, what are we going to do with the wolf boy?"

"I guess we follow your advice," Taiyang answered with a light shrug. "I don't see any better solution."

"Great!" nodded the man. "Now, call 'em in, I want to be turned into a wolf."

/- _Seven years later_ -/

Taiyang Xiao Long sat on his house's doorstep, chin on hand, watching his three children 'train', which meant playing around while having fun using their weapons or whatever. It had been seven years from the fateful night they took the young wolf in, seven long and at the same time short years, and to the man it felt like the times when Jaune was not part of the family were memories of another lifetime.

Ruby was still the smallest of the house in all but age, since Jaune was actually barely eight all in all, despite looking fifteen. She hadn't filled out much in terms of curves but she took after her mother in all but weapon. She had begun Signal the year before, but she was doing crappy at school since she really hadn't wanted to go, instead wishing she could remain home and be homeschooled like Jaune.

Speaking of the wolf/boy/Faunus/whatever -Taiyang still wasn't sure how to describe his race, though Summer would've had his head if she knew that-, Jaune had grown a lot in those years, especially as wolf. While his human -Faunus?- form was around Yang's height, his original form had grown so much he had trouble moving around in the house, reaching ten feet in length and four in height – Ruby and Yang loved to use him as their horse, with Summer sometimes joining them. Even Qrow had suffered a ride.

And lastly, Yang had grown a lot in those years, both in height and body. At the mere age of fifteen, she had already surpassed Summer in both curves and stature, probably due to her being his and Raven's daughter instead of his and Summer's. Although that did not stop Summer from being slightly envious.

Yang had been training at Signal for years now, learning hand-to-hand combat with her father and sparring with both Ruby and Jaune. Ruby was still a pushover for her, both due to her younger age and to the fact she didn't really pay attention at school, but Jaune could -sometimes- get the better of her.

Taiyang preened a little. She was using _his_ fighting style, after all.

"Smooth your feathers down, peacock," Qrow snorted beside him. "You look as if you created the world."

"No, but I taught Yang and Jaune," smirked the blond.

"Hey, I taught Jaune too, and maybe I'll teach Ruby since she's so set on having me teach her too," retorted the brunette.

"And I taught all three of them," a voice spoke up from behind them as Summer Rose exited the wooden cabin to look at the children playing. "Don't go take all the merit."

"Ugh, yes _mom_," grunted Qrow. "Say, shouldn't you be at school, teaching unruly children how to use Aura, instead of being here to pester us, who have _rightfully earned_ some time off work?"

"It's Sunday, doofus," replied the woman, pushing him aside and taking his place in sitting beside her husband. "Also, this is my man. If you want one, go and find yourself someone else. Tai's taken."

"Ha ha, very funny," grumbled Qrow, dusting himself off. "Listen, I'll be missing for a week in a few days. Oz wants me to go to Vacuo of all places, I hate that boiling hot desert. Think you can handle the kids without blowing up the house?"

"I think so. Beside, the only thing to 'handle' by now is Jaune's choice of mate when he'll have to decide, but that's gonna go smoothly enough," shrugged the woman.

"Watch out for when the heat hits," joked Qrow, only to receive a slap on the back of his head. "Ouch, what did I do?"

"That was a Taiyang-level joke, Qrow, plus male wolves do not go in heat," scolded Summer, frowning at him. "Now, I believe you say you had to go, so we won't keep you here any longer. Feel free to go whenever you want."

"Nah, I think-"

"_Feel free to go whenever you want_."

"You know what I need to go, bye!" exclaimed the man, jumping up to go and say bye to the kids. Taiyang snickered at the scene. Summer knew how to be convincing when she wanted to.

"So, about Jaune's mate, you do know who he chose, right?"

"He hasn't said anything yet," shrugged the woman. "And to be honest, I am not worried. Whoever he'll choose…" She sighed deeply and shook her head. "I don't think they are going to take the fact he's a wolf well."

"I doubt that, and by now I don't think he'll search for a wolf female," added Taiyang.

"Speaking of searching for significant others, though… have you heard the news?" Summer smiled slyly when her husband shook his head. "Well well well… it seems that Yang invited someone over. Someone she seems to blush a little when teased about…"

"Wait, it's time already?" Taiyang groaned and covered his face with his hands. "They grow up so fast!" he sobbed dramatically before all tears dried up and he smiled like a shark. "Now, _today?_"

Summer nodded with a matching grin. "Today."

"He's unaware?"

"I doubt he even knows Yang has a brother."

"Oh Dust I was looking forwards to this."

"Mom, Dad, why are you doing the evil face again?" Ruby's voice cut through their schemes like a dulled knife through stale bread – that meant she had to repeat her question three times before they actually snapped out of it.

"Sorry sweetheart, we were just planning what to do tonight. You know, Yang's _friend_ is coming to visit," Summer replied with a wink at the girl.

"Mom, will you stop it? I never bring anyone home, can't I have a social life outside of school?" complained the blonde girl, hands on her hips in an imitation of Summer's own scolding position. "Besides, it's mostly just to study."

"Mostly. And what about the rest?" Taiyang chimed in with a smirk. "Should we buy the rings already?"

"Oh, shut up!" snapped Yang, redness creeping on her cheeks. "He's just a friend!"

Jaune, still in wolf form, yapped loudly and pounced on Yang, pinning her to the ground and barking in triumph, completely ignoring the topic of their conversation even though he could understand the human language just fine.

"See, even Jaune thinks we're right," laughed Taiyang. "But now! Who wants to have lunch?"

All the three children, huge wolf included, cheered, and Jaune stepped away from Yang to turn back human. Or well, Faunus with more animal traits than it should've been possible.

The boy was well-built, though not muscular like Taiyang despite sharing hair and eye colour. He was, as Tai called it, built like a wolf. Strong, but more apt for speed and agility than brute strength. While Yang's abs and biceps were so defined one could've easily ground _stone_ on them, Jaune was… the most similar term Tai could think of was a swimmer's built, but somehow more defined and no less lean. Like… a wolf.

His tail was now long enough to reach mid-calves, while his ears stood tall and proud. Teeth and claws weren't in sight, but Taiyang knew both had grown as well.

He was wearing a dark grey long-sleeved bodysuit complete with pants. The Aura-sensitive Dust-woven clothes had been expensive, but as long as Jaune wore his special collar in wolf form, he would be wearing that bodysuit once he turned back into Faunus. The idea had been Qrow's, who had asked his 'friend' Ironwood and had given it to Jaune for his tenth birthday. Apparently, the old crow had been tired of having Jaune having to re-dress every time he used his Semblance.

Jaune hurried to put on his boots and the light 'armour' Summer had forged for him. It wasn't a real armour, but instead Dust-woven cloth with pockets, because everyone needed pockets. The 'armour' was black with silver accents, and covered his entire torso without restricting his movements in any way.

Taiyang remembered quite well the first time they had forced Jaune to wear something that had hindered his movements. The innocent article had been torn off and ripped to shreds after the seventh time he had stumbled.

Then Taiyang's grin turned even more vicious. There was no time to lose in reminiscence. He had to plan how to scare the very soul out of the hapless idiot who had dared lay his eyes on his little Yang. And Jaune would help, just like they had practised.

**_Before you wonder yes, Jaune is totally in the plan and knows about it. He has the mental capabilities of a normal 15 years old boy despite him not talking in this chapter. He still has some wolf traits but those will be shown later._**

**_Also no, I won't keep Jaune being naked every time he uses his Semblance since he likes to use it to become wolf, so it would've been a bit too bothersome for them not to do something about it._**

**_Finally, Summer is still alive. Now, I know this is hard to accept, but the point is that while missions have to pay well, I think Tai and Summer would both prefer taking up a stable job, rather than being out of their children's lives for days or weeks at a time. And since we do not know if Summer has been killed by Salem (by Salem I mean her faction not literally her) or just by Grimm, I'll assume that not going on missions saved her life._**

**_Also, Tai's reasons are solid._**

**_Now, sorry if you love 'Ruby being the strongest' trope to death, she will be as strong as canon later if not more, but as she personally says in Ep1 V1, before her uncle taught her she was crap. Now, let's suppose Signal starts at 12 (because teaching pre-teens how to fight is just something I cannot accept being done). To see that she sucked, she must've at least attended for 1 year. 13. Two years later she was moved up, so that left two years with Qrow, starting when she's 13 or something. So in this chapter she still 'sucked' as she said, plus Yang had two years of training more than her._**

**_As well, Jaune is currently stronger than her but only because he was taught for longer. Also Jaune is not so strong against Yang. Again, they still have two years before Beacon, so don't think they are at Beacon-level. Yang is the strongest in Signal and Jaune almost matches her, but they're still weak if compared to how they'll be later._**

**_And finally yes, lying is the best solution for now. Later we'll see Jaune revealing his secrets to others, but for the sake of the story I will not have everyone he meets be like 'give me 1000000+ reasons for why I should treat you like a human otherwise you're just an animal'. That would get boring quite quickly and this story is not meant to be boring._**

**_Jaune's weapons, Lunar Crescents, will be revealed in the next chapter. Yes, Ruby helped him with the name. ^^_**

**_Until next time,_**

**_Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh_**


	3. Wolf Among Humans

**_*guilty face* Uhh... Writer's Block?_**

**_A month. A month and two days, to be exact. That's how long I made you all wait for this. Yes, it's not all that much considering I also have a life outside fanfictions, but I still feel guilty._**

**_Oh well. This chapter should make up for it. Total comedy. And on a final note, I drew a coverart for this story. A wolf's eye (guess whose) with Lunar Crescents (Jaune's weapons) criss-crossing it. Go easy on me, it's my first time drawing eyes._**

A whine rang out in the airship, the latest of the long series of wails, whimpers and complaints that had gone on ever since the Bullhead had taken off for Beacon.

Blake Belladonna wasn't sure of what to expect from Beacon Academy, but it surely wasn't that. The airship was filled with many different people, sure, ranging from Pyrrha Nikos -a tournament champion from Mistral- to Weiss Schnee -heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, from Atlas-, but the duo near the large windows beat them all in weirdness.

Sitting nearer to the window there was a busty blonde bombshell with lilac eyes, dressed in a pretty risqué outfit that showed off her curves and most of all her cleavage – which Blake admitted was actually impressive. She wondered how she could even fight with those things attached to her chest. But that wasn't the main detail.

Next to her there was a much shorter metallic-eyed girl with black hair that ended in red tips, dressed in a gothic red and black corset-skirt-tights with a red cloak and a rectangular object placed on her lower back, which Blake was pretty sure was her weapon, though she had no idea _what_ kind of weapon it actually was.

But the oddest detail was the huge, and she meant _huge_, black wolf whose head was laying on both the girls' laps, whining as if in distress. And by _huge_ she meant that thing was probably larger than a full-grown horse, each fang longer than her fingers. The monster of a wolf was laying down, and even so it looked gigantic. Its head was so large that it covered the entirety of the black-haired girl's lap from throat to jaw, and the blonde's left leg with the end of its jaw. If that thing decided to lay over someone, she was pretty sure that someone wouldn't even be visible. But other than that, what was it doing there in Beacon? Were they allowed to have pets? Curiosity getting the better of her, Blake's cat ears twitched as she began to eavesdrop.

"…iny boy, it's just a Bullhead," the blonde girl was saying.

"Yang, come on, it's his first time on an airship," the black-haired girl defended their pet as both girls stroked his dark fur. The wolf gave a whine that sounded strangely pointedly. "Also, Jaune is used to moving on his own legs, not on a 'metal deathtrap' as he put it."

Blake frowned. _'As he put it?'_

The blonde scoffed and ruffled the wolf's fur. "Drama queen."

There was another whine.

The taller girl, Yang, laughed. "Yeah yeah, whatever you say. I'll believe you when you'll manage to speak without sounding so sick."

_'They can definitely understand what it says… a Semblance of some kind, maybe?'_ Blake pursued her lips. For them to have identical Semblances was possible, but the chances were so low she had trouble believing it. The chances that two people with the same Semblance, who knew each other, and were on their way to the same school, were just inexistent. There had to be another explanation. _'Maybe one of their Semblances is talking with animals while the other is telepathy, so they can both understand?'_

"But I still think it's your fault for remaining wolf."

_'Wait, what?'_

The wolf grumbled, it literally grumbled. It wasn't a whine or a whimper, it was a real _grumble_.

"That's a lie and you know it." There was another grumble, this time a little angrier. "Okay, maybe that's not a _complete_ lie, but still! I'm pretty sure that's the problem."

"Yang, come on, it's his first time flying, he's not used to any kind of vehicle!" the shorter protested, coming to the wolf's defence. "Besides, I'm pretty sure he'd be like this even in human form."

_'Wait wait wait someone gets me subtitles here!'_

"You sure? Jaune's got the best balance out of all of us, wouldn't he be unaffected by the ship's rocking?"

Cue another pitiful whine.

"It doesn't work like that, Yang! He's got Aura, this is not just motion sickness, it's the new place and his first time on a Bullhead!"

_'Okay, that's enough,'_ Blake inwardly sighed and tuned them out. She might've been a cat Faunus, but she wasn't _that_ curious. If push came to things, she would ask the wolf's owners, otherwise she could live without knowing.

/-/

"Finally out of that deathtrap!" Jaune sighed in relief as he inhaled deeply the fresh air, ignoring the stares people were giving him because of his abundance of animal traits. "I thought I was gonna die in there…"

"You're such a dork," snorted Yang, standing beside him with her arms crossed.

"And you're a meanie," he retorted, taking a page from Ruby's book and glaring at his sister. "Had our roles been reversed, you wouldn't be laughing so much."

"I wasn't laughing! Well, not at you anyway. I mean…" Yang leaned in to whisper conspirationally into both her siblings' ears. "Have you _seen_ the looks on the others' faces? They were hilarious!"

"Well, I guess seeing a giant wolf in the airship to Beacon isn't something they expected," smiled Ruby, trying to contain her mirth. "At least they didn't try to cause a scene."

"Oh, 'bout that, I was kinda scaring away everyone who looked at us the wrong way," Yang mentioned off-handedly. "Kinda. When I wasn't busy stroking my dear lil' brother's fur."

"We're twins," grumbled Jaune.

"Nope, you are eleven as of now, maybe twelve," Yang winked at him, making him groan. "So you're my little brother."

"Don't worry Jaune, you may be younger than me but you're still my big brother!" Ruby reassured him, but the fact her smile was twitching in the effort of keeping her laughter in check kind of ruined her comforting words.

Yang smiled at the two. They were so sweet, both of them, such a pair of sweet, cute little siblings. But most of all, they were distracted. She eyed a group of students walking out of the airship and felt her smile pull up into a smirk. With both her siblings being as socially apt as a fish out of water, she knew what she had to do. If she remained with them, they'd cling to her like seashells to a rock.

It wasn't like she wanted to dump them, rather they _needed_ her to dump them so that they could make some friends outside of each other. She would've preferred to split them up too, but doing so would've been impossible since Jaune's smell sense was just too good, he'd find them in a heartbeat. Taking him with her and leaving Ruby was another option, but Jaune would've probably just forced her to go back to the crimsonette. That only left dumping Jaune and Ruby, and of course make sure they had to interact so to give herself time to run.

Her eyes narrowed as she spotted a girl with an ungodly amount of luggage. That girl just screamed 'rich, snob, with a stick so far up my ass I have difficulty eating normally' from her clothes, to the haughty expression painted on her face, to the way she moved.

It was something extremely mean to do to her siblings.

Yang didn't hesitate.

Since Jaune was basically impossible to trip -heck, _he_ used a fighting style based on tripping his opponents, he surely wasn't vulnerable to his own technique-, Yang settled for Ruby – she'd have to apologize later, but later was later and now was now.

"Oh look my friends are here gotta go bye!" Ignoring the fact her friends were very much not there, she darted away, making sure to bump into Ruby and 'accidentally' spin her around, making her lose her balance. Before either of them could realize her plan, she ran away, blending in with the group of students she had spotted earlier, stopping just long enough to see Ruby fall down onto the white haired girl's luggage, sending it everywhere. At mission accomplished, Yang wisely chose to make herself scarce.

Back with her siblings, Ruby sat up and rubbed her head. Her Aura had protected her from the physical damage, but her brain was still dazed by being spun around so fast. Damn Yang and her friends… "Owie…"

"What are you doing?!"

The shrill voice that pierced the air like one of Crescent Rose's rounds, and Ruby cringed even more. "Owie owie…" Turning to face the source of her pain, she was met with the sight of a very very short girl. And for short she meant tiny, without heels she'd be even shorter than Ruby – and Ruby was two years younger than anyone else. "Uhh…"

"Do you have any idea of the damage you could've caused?!" the girl in white continued to rant, her shrill voice doing nothing to ease Ruby's headache. It was starting to bother Jaune's acute hearing too, it was just that high-pitched. "You just knocked off a case full of Dust. _Dust!_ It could've exploded!"

"Uhh…" Ruby and Jaune exchanged a helpless glance.

"What are you, braindead? Do you not know Dust is extremely volatile?!"

"Jaune, help," Ruby murmured under her breath. "I don't know what to do."

"Me neither, but I'll think of something." Jaune frowned pensively at the girl. Hurting her physically was not an option, or at least not a good one or one he was okay with taking. Chasing her away with words would've been the perfect option, but unfortunately neither Rose child was good with people. That left the third option – shutting her up.

"Stop staring at me, you filthy Faunus, and don't you dare touch me!" the girl yelled at him as soon as he raised a hand to grab her shoulder. Ignoring her was easy, though his ears had begun to hurt a little. A flash of light later, the huge black wolf from the airship was holding a paw on a light grey wolf, a normal-sized one, keeping it down. The second wolf was still tangled in the clothes she had been previously wearing, but at least her growls and snarls didn't hurt their ears any more.

"It is not everyday you see the heiress of the Schnee Dust Company being turned into a wolf," a sardonic voice spoke up from behind them. The three turned to see a girl dressed in black and white attire, with long black hair, amber eyes, and a ribbon on top of her head. Jaune sniffed the air. Was that… "Much less by the very Faunus she was harassing…"

…yes that was definitely a cat. Jaune stared at her intently. A kitty cat, nearing a wolf? But where was it… _Ruby_, he communicated with a low whine, _do you see any cat or cat Faunus around?_

"No, why?" she replied in a very low whisper.

_You said no chasing kitties or kitty Faunus, so this is allowed!_ Releasing the Schnee heiress wolf, Jaune grinned at the black-haired girl, who suddenly looked far less amused.

"Uh… nice doggy?"

"Jaune, n-"

Too late. Jaune sprung forward, trying to catch the cat girl, but only managed to land on some kind of illusion that disappeared as soon as he hit it. The girl herself didn't waste time to come up with an effective strategy.

Turn and run.

For ten minutes, the courtyard was graced by the sight of the black-haired girl being chased by a gigantic black wolf, who was chased by a red-tipped-haired girl, and in turn a light grey wolf was clumsily trying to chase after the others.

For ten minutes, in his tower, Ozpin decided that the welcoming speech could wait, if it meant he could enjoy the show for a little longer. By his side even Glynda was of the same opinion.

Back in the courtyard, Ruby finally managed to catch up to Jaune, who in turn had managed to catch up to the black-haired girl and had sat on her back, pinning her down.

"Jaune!" she scolded him, turning his waggy-tail-face into a scolded-puppy-face. "You can't chase people like that!"

_You said she wasn't a cat nor a cat Faunus!_

"It doesn't matter, not chasing people is a rule!"

_A rule Mom and Dad allowed me to break every time Yang brought someone home!_

Ruby opened her mouth to protest, but closed it. "Well… you're not wrong, but still! That's not nice at all. Free that girl, and morph back into human, now!"

With another grumble, the wolf stood up from the girl – who wheezed for breath – and activated his Semblance once again. A flash of light later, Jaune was back into his human/Faunus/whatever form as their father called it.

The girl in white too returned human – though she had wriggled out of her clothes to chase them earlier, leaving her in her birth outfit.

Her shriek of rage shook the Beacon grounds.

/-/

In Yang's opinion, Ruby and Jaune looked both like two puppies who knew to have done something they shouldn't have, and had been caught. Heads lowered, fidgety, at the effort they put into not meeting her eyes were a dead giveaway. She wanted to sigh and be exasperated -because as big sister, she knew the shriek from earlier had been their fault, somehow-, but she knew nothing would've happened, had she allowed her two socially inept siblings to stick by her side. Instead she'd gone and forced them to socialize on their own.

Well, if she had to be honest, they had done something good – they had made the girl in white and the girl in black bond over their mutual dislike for Ruby and Jaune. Too bad that didn't help their friendless situation in the slightest, it actually made it even worse as they now had two enemies.

But Yang wasn't one to be so easily discouraged. Her socially awkward siblings had to socialize somehow! Maybe next time she wouldn't just leave them in the middle of the courtyard of a school they knew nothing about, surrounded by people they didn't know in the slightest. Still, that had definitely yielded results. Now Ruby and Jaune _knew_ how socially awkward they were.

"Okay, so Jaune you turned a girl into wolf and then chased another one just because she smelled like a cat without being a cat Faunus. And you all ran around the courtyard for ten minutes before stopping. And then, turning back to human, the first girl didn't have a Dust-woven suit like you have and was naked. And she got reasonably angry. Is this all?"

"Yes?" Jaune offered meekly.

"You!" Yang's eyes widened as both Ruby and Jaune jumped on her, Ruby on her arms while Jaune on her head like a cat.

Behind them, _of course_, there was the girl in white, sided by the girl in black, both with a displeased frown on their face.

"You are just lucky I won't sue you for sexual harassment!" seethed the girl in white, making Jaune use Yang's hair as shield. "And you! Why didn't you restrain your pet!?"

"He's not a pet, he's my brother!" Ruby jumped off Yang's arms and crossed her arms over her chest. "And you were hurting his ears! They're very sensitive!"

"He's an animal!"

"Hey, just because he's a Faunus, you can't call him that!" the girl in black intervened, now arguing with the one in white.

Jaune silently gestured for all three of them to sneak away while they argued.

"I'm not calling him animal because he's a Faunus, I'm calling him animal because of what he did!"

"I can agree to that, then!" retorted Black Girl as both turned to the three who were trying to crawl away. Their plan was busted before it even truly began. "What were you thinking?! I'm not some sort of cat!"

"I'm sorry!" Jaune exclaimed, his ears flat against his head. "I was just curious! You smell like a cat Faunus but I couldn't see your traits so I was trying to get a closer sniff to prove my guess!"

"I'm not a Faunus!" Black Girl retorted a bit too quickly before coughing into her hand and glaring at him. "You could've asked."

"I'm not good with people!"

Yang closed her eyes and quickly counted to one before being merciful and stepping in between the two arguing parties. "Okay, okay, listen, you all got off the wrong foot. I won't try and say it's not their fault for being so socially inept, because it totally is. But keeping this on is kinda pointless – I mean, we are here to be comrades, not enemies, am I right?"

Black Girl narrowed her eyes but accepted the truth in her words – or maybe she just didn't want to stick around any more. She stalked off without looking back, and without saying another word. She gave off every sign of considering the conversation over, done for, and buried.

Alas, White Girl didn't seem to be as forgiving. Her eye twitched before she glared at Jaune. "I will let this slide _for now_ and _only this time_. But you'd better never do something like that again. If you could avoid talking to me at all, that'd be even better." Her piece said, she twirled on her heel and stormed off, not before shooting them one last withering glare.

The three of them fell into a very awkward silence after the two problems had walked off. Ruby was fidgeting with her skirt and shuffling her feet while Jaune was rubbing the back of his head with his ears flat against his scalp and his tail still between his legs.

Yang sighed. "I'm not mad…" Trailing off, she reconsidered her words, and decided there was no point in lying. "Okay, I'm a little mad, but it's eventually my fault for dumping you like that."

"Ha! You admit you ditched us on purpose!" Ruby exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger at her.

The blonde swatted her hand aside. "Yes, to make you socialize, but it seems that didn't go so well all in all. I'll admit it, it wasn't my brightest idea, but in my defence you two are hopeless. Now, Jaune never went anywhere without Mom or Dad so he kind of has a reason to be socially awkward, but you Ruby went to Signal with me. You should be able to make friends."

"All the 'friends' I made at Signal were just trying to get closer to you," Ruby mumbled dejectedly. "Now that you're not there any more they're not even replying my calls. It's like we were never friends. I don't want other 'friends' like that here too."

Yang inwardly winced. Superpowers and Aura were something many people wanted so it was pretty normal for combat schools to be filled to the brim with assholes who were there just for the power. And while she usually took care of those assholes, it wasn't like she could keep Ruby isolated and lonely all thorough Signal just because she feared they were using her – even though her fears had been confirmed true. She sighed and ruffled the shorter girl's hair. "It's okay Rubes. Maybe I went too far with this… okay I definitely did… but honestly, how are you going to make friends if you don't try to socialize?"

"Maybe I don't want to socialize?" Ruby huffed and crossed her arms. "I'm here to become a Huntress, not to socialize! I'm not good with people!"

"Ditto, I certainly wasn't planning on befriending anyone, my pack's enough," Jaune added in a serious voice, as if not making friends was a perfectly normal thing to do. Which wasn't exactly wrong, but still it wasn't right either. "Besides, we don't even know how to talk with people, we'd only end up with more Whites and Blacks."

Yang pursued her lips and frowned. They weren't exactly _wrong_, just _misguided_.

Oh well, she'd just have to teach them.

/-/

"Yang, could you fetch me my weapon?"

"Uhhh… yep, mine too Yang, please!"

Early the day after, Yang Xiao Long found herself in the locker rooms, sided by Ruby on the left and Jaune on the right, both acting quite skittish and fidgety. If that wasn't enough of a clue, they had also asked her to fetch their weapons – and both loved their weapons to death. The pack was allowed to touch them, no one else, but even then they never gave up the chance of wielding them themselves.

"Uh… what happened to your weapons?" she asked cautiously. "Did you cover them in poison and now you want me to take them to get revenge for yesterday?"

"No no no!" exclaimed Ruby. "It's just… well… I left my weapon beside Jaune's…"

"And right now in front of my locker…" Jaune jerked his head in his locker's direction. Following his sign with her eyes, Yang felt realization dawn upon her. Before his locker stood two girls – one was definitely Pyrrha Nikos and just like that Yang suddenly had a spar planned for the first free fifteen minutes they had out of class. The other was White from the day prior, clad in her usual white combat skirt and with an elegant steel rapier at her side.

Oh. Oh no. Oh hell no. She wasn't gonna stick her nose in someone else's business – not this time, at least. If the two of them had a problem with the girl in white, then they were going to solve it by themselves. It wasn't that Yang didn't want to be embarrassed by her siblings in front of Pyrrha Nikos herself, nossir! It was just that… well… they had to grow up and start living their own life without Big Sis to help them. Yeah. Yeah, that sounded good. She felt pride for her own ability to come up with an excu-… with a reason, so quickly. "Sorry sis, sorry lil' bro, but White over there is something you have to deal with by yourselves. Besides, what is gonna happen the first time Big Sis isn't here to help you? You need to come out of your shell and do things on your own."

"Shells."

"Uh?"

"You said 'shell'. There's two of us, so 'shells'."

"No, because you're both hiding in the same shell, Rubes. Social awkwardness."

The two Rose siblings stared at White like she was the source of all evil in Remnant, from famine to Grimm to disease. Yang was pretty sure they even started to tremble a little bit. Jaune's tail was swishing nervously and his ears were lowered, while Ruby was holding the hem of her skirt in her hands while biting her lip. Both looked like they were expecting a miracle to happen and save them.

A miracle did not happen, but Yang did.

With a push, she shoved the both of them forwards. Ruby tripped and flailed her arms about, grabbing Jaune's shirt and bringing him down with her once he stumbled into her. Yang could only facepalm as the two messed up a single step. And to think, both of them were incredibly graceful on the battlefield. Not even a drunk Qrow stumbled as much as them when they were nervous.

The two Rose children tumbled forwards, hitting the armoured redhead's back and shoving her into White whose face, due to height difference, banged right against the redhead's bracer. The mess of tangled legs and arms ended up on the floor, a little dazed by the blow. What had started as a single, simple step, had finished with a four-way stumble that had brought them all down.

Well, at least now Yang knew Beacon was so going to be interesting. If her siblings were going to mess up every single social interaction, at least she'd have a long list of people to hurt for making her siblings cry.

"You again!" White's extremely shrill voice screeched again as the girl tried to wriggle free of the tangle on the floor. Her face was red in apoplectic rage and Yang was pretty sure she was about to burst a vessel. "Do you even know who you just knocked over?!"

"Weiss, it was just an accident, they-" the redhead, Pyrrha Nikos, tried to calm her down, but the fact she was still on the floor under the two Rose children stopped her from talking much as a knee pressed itself in her solar plexus as the owner of said knee tried to stand up.

"This does not excuse anything! This is the second time their clumsiness leads to a disaster! Someone as clumsy as they are shouldn't even be in Beacon!" Rounding on Ruby, eyes blazing and headache-inducing voice high, she continued her rant. "And you don't even _look_ the right age! Did you sneak into Beacon?! I'll have you kicked out for-"

Her shrill voice was once again interrupted by a flash of light as Jaune once again decided that his ears hurt more than his social awkwardness. When the light subsided the huge black wolf was sitting on a rust-brown wolf clad in the redhead's clothes, with a paw over the same light-grey wolf from the courtyard. A reddish-black wolf disentangled herself from the pile and sat on her hind legs, knowing her clothes were just gonna hinder her.

Not wasting time, and ignoring the two wolfs' protests, the black wolf opened the two lockers behind them, a skill he had learned long ago when trying to open cookie jars and kitchen drawers, and grabbed Crescent Rose and Lunar Crescents in its large maw. Since there was still enough space, the wolf also grabbed the reddish-black wolf by the scruff of her neck and lifted her up, scurrying away and turning a corner.

A flash of light later, another howl of rage shook the Academy, and Yang finally doubled over laughing.

**_Well, that was a thing. It's gonna be fun having to reconcile those four. And Jaune's favourite technique for avoiding social interaction is turning into a wolf, or turning everyone into a wolf. Besides, he knows that in wolf form he's much better than anyone. Even Summer, Tai and Qrow have difficulty defeating him while they are all in wolf form - but that's something for another time._**

**_Anyway, I updated my profile with three more story ideas so... well, you know, if you want you can go look at them. One is an idea I got from a game I've been told about - that I later found out was a porn game, much to my disappointment. Another is just an idea of what would've happened had Jaune been a French nobleman from the Renaissance to have fallen on Remnant. The third is The Shadow Army - basically, putting together all the lessons I've learned while writing Trail of Blood, and using some ideas I've got/been given too late._**

**_And with these I just got past the 40 mark for possible future story ideas. I'm hopeless, I know..._**

**_Until next time,_**

**_Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh_**


	4. Forest Fun

**_And here I am with another chapter of Rose. Now, it's taken me eight days to update this - it felt eight months to me. I'm sick, on an antibiotic that's probably killing me alongside the virus, and I've been trying to write (vainly) for days, so I'll just keep this short, with only one warning._**

**_Don't read too much in the character's PoVs, okay? This is a comedy fic and it's meant to stay that way. I know 99% of you know this already and are not gonna comment on 'OoCness' or whatever, but for the remaining 1%, keep in mind this is comedy._**

Ozpin had seen many, many, _many_ weird things all thorough his many, many, _many_ lifetimes, but he still believed the sight before him to be new. That might've had something to do with the fact he'd never personally met most of the students before, but he liked to keep the dramatics up and say it was because destiny rustled in the leaves and the wind hovered over them with baited breath… no wait, the wind was rustling and destiny was hovering, he must've gotten confused for a second.

Returning to gaze mysteriously upon his students, he imperceptibly nodded at Glynda Goodwitch beside him in thanks for having telekinetically removed a stray leaf from his hair. Ah, the downsides of standing enigmatically at the top of a cliff near a forest, on a windy day, he supposed. He moved his mug of hot cocoa slightly off to the side, allowing another leave to twirl by without falling in it.

_'This patch of students, this year, seemed to be particularly interesting. I meant, this batch of students, of course,'_ he thought idly, his unwavering gaze scanning the crowd with what the students would perceive as old wisdom, but that was actually curiosity born from boredom. The whole lot seemed to be promising enough, and quite a few stood out even more.

First and foremost, Pyrrha Nikos, young prodigy of Mistral, with skills at the level of a professional Hunter. She seemed pensive, but not nervous and after all why would she? Initiation would be a piece of cake for someone of her level. She kept stealing glances up the row, for some reason. Ozpin ignored her weird behaviour. She had probably spotted someone skilled enough to be her partner, but unfortunately for her the partnering system didn't do no favour to anyone.

Not far from her there was Weiss Schnee, heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, a haughty and mildly enraged expression on her face. Ozpin had an idea who that rage was directed against, and he hoped the two of them wouldn't be partnered up. Despite training them to fight monsters, he didn't want his students to die if he could avoid it, especially not killed by their own partners during Initiation.

Cardin Winchester also stood out, mostly because of his height and bulky armour. Ozpin knew his father by reputation, as Henry Winchester was a member of the Vale Council himself. The man wasn't a bad person by any mean, having funded many a charity organization and being a steadfast supporter of the movement for the renovation of Vale, but his worst flaw was his strong racism. He could keep it under wraps and act professional during the Council's reunions, but Ozpin knew it wasn't the same when he was home, and thus his only son Cardin had been grown into racism with the same ease birds learned how to fly.

Ozpin refrained himself from shaking his head in disapproval before he turned to glance at the other students. Three particularly were the source of his interest, the three Rose-Xiao Long children. He hadn't known about Ms Rose's silver eyes until a couple of days prior, something he chalked off to Qrow not wanting to risk dragging her onto the battlefield for as long as possible.

Ozpin almost scoffed. As if he dragged children into fights against their will.

Yang Xiao Long, the troublemaker of Signal from what he'd heard, had been usually the one whose praise Qrow sung every time his nieces were brought up, and not for no reason. He had seen some of her fights in Signal. While there was still room for improvement, he had to admit she was going to be among the most skilled students in his school.

The one he was intrigued by the most, though, was the third one, Jaune Rose-Xiao Long. Mainly because he had popped out of nowhere. He hadn't heard even a whisper about Summer and Taiyang adopting a Faunus, and such a unique one at that. He didn't have silver eyes, so Ozpin was confused as to why the family had kept him hidden for so long – because there was no mistaking their actions, they had indeed hidden him for years.

Sighing to himself, he waited for all students to arrive and choose the platform they liked the most – with most students choosing the closest nearby. Then he realized he didn't really have any speech planned, and thus glanced at his Deputy to start, as he knew she always had a speech ready. Probably even just to say she was going to the bathroom. Something along the lines of how important bathroom breaks were for everyone, probably.

"Now I'm sure you've all heard rumours about the assignation of teams. Allow us to put an end to your confusion. Each of you will be assigned teammates… today." Her merciless glare swept over the students, and Ozpin was pleased to notice most of them shrank under her withering glower.

Too bad it couldn't be weaponized against the Grimm.

"These teammates will be with you for the rest of your time in Beacon, so it is in your best interest to be paired with whom you can work well with," continued Ozpin, catching up with what Goodwitch was saying and hurriedly making an impromptu speech. He was good at making stuff up from scratch. "That being said, the first person you make eye contact with after landing will be your partner for the next four years."

"_WHAT?!_"

"See? I told you…"

Two of the three Rose-Xiao Long children yelled out in surprise with shock and despair written all over their faces at the drop of the bomb. Nora Valkyrie, a girl further down the row, remarked something to her neighbour, Lie Ren, the two probably knowing each other already.

Ozpin smirked internally. He loved when some of his students knew each other already. It made their shenanigans all the funnier to watch. Like what had happened the day before in the courtyard, when young Mr Rose-Xiao Long had turned Ms Schnee into a wolf and then proceeded to chase Ms Belladonna all around the courtyard.

He was woken up from his reverie when the first student was sent flying. Turning to Glynda, he opened his mouth to question her decision as he still hadn't informed them of how to complete Initiation.

She beat him to it.

"I already told them, Headmaster, while you were zoning out," the Deputy explained wearily as the students were sent flying one after the other.

Ah. Mystery solved. He really loved having a Deputy to solve his problems all the time.

/-/

Ruby Rose deployed her scythe and hooked it to a sturdy branch, spinning around it for a few times before graciously dropping like a rock to the ground and landing on her feet. A quick glance around to check if there was any Grimm nearby revealed no threats, and she nodded with determination.

Then she pulled her hood far down her face to hide her eyes from view, and took off into the forest. Slowly, since Jaune was probably already tracking her scent and going fast would only delay the inevitable.

Ruby almost laughed maniacally.

Jaune would be her partner, and then they'd find Yang. They'd all be on the same team, no matter what. Fate could go suck a lollipop and choke on it.

Finding walking to be pretty useless when there was Jaune scenting her out, she just climbed up a tree and sat on a branch, letting her legs dangle in the air, a hand keeping her hood down while the other rested on Crescent Rose, her faithful scythe. Her eyes couldn't see her surroundings, but her ears were taking in every sound to be aware of any danger, be it Grimm or non-Jaune, non-Yang possible partners.

She was so focused listening to the sounds around her that she almost didn't hear the approaching footsteps coming in her direction. Almost. And given how Jaune would've been running, not walking, she could easily guess the newcomer was neither Jaune nor a Grimm.

With a squeak, she pulled her hood down and over her eyes just in time to spot light azure heeled shoes attached to a pair of pearly white legs.

"You!"

Oh Dust no. Ruby squeaked and hid even more, bringing her legs up and over the branch, almost disappearing under her cloak entirely.

She heard the white-themed girl huff before scoffing and continuing to walk, mumbling something about unworthy partners and stupid animals.

Ruby released a sigh of relief. At least she hadn't been partnered up with the walking icicle. Seriously, what was her problem anyway? They had apologized, and she was the one who had started screeching at them so loud Jaune had reacted on instinct!

The minutes trickled by slowly, so slowly she felt as if hours had passed… even though she rationally knew it had only been a few minutes. Gunfire sounded out in the distance – not Yang, she could tell, as it sounded more like a grenade's explosion or something similar.

She was more focused this time, though, so when the footfalls neared her location, she was already hiding in leaves.

Shortly after, a tall redhead walked into view – Pyrrha Nikos, the same girl from the locker room. That wasn't good, not at all. She carefully avoided meeting the girl's eyes, focusing on her weapons -which were pretty nice, and very complex from what she could see- as the champion fighter walked past her tree. Once she was gone, Ruby breathed out in relief.

The redhead popped back into view immediately, scaring the hell out of the poor reaper. "I knew there was someone here. I'm sorry for having startled you, but I was looking for a blond Faunus boy. Have you seen him?"

_'She's looking for Jaune?'_ A pit of worry and other bad feelings opened up in her stomach. Mom and Dad had always told her that some people would want to hurt Jaune because of his peculiarity. If she was looking for Jaune, right after the accident in the locker room where he had turned her into a wolf _and_ stepped on her while doing so, there was no doubt in Ruby's mind: that girl wanted to hurt him, possibly even worse. Why else would she wander in a Grimm-infested forest looking for _him_ specifically, when the Headmaster had clearly stated the partnering method was pretty much dumb luck or misfortune?

"I… Uh… D-Dressed how?" she jumbled out, trying to act pretty clueless while her mind worked a mile a second. Superspeed, bitches, superspeed.

"Grey skin-tight bodysuit, dark grey leather chestplate, bracers and greaves, black combat boots not unlike your own… the one you were with when we… met… in the locker's room," Pyrrha explained, for some reason trying not to meet her eyes.

That settled it. The girl was not meeting her eyes because she didn't want her to see the lies in them. She truly did want to hurt Jaune or even worse _kill_ him! Mom and Dad had always told her she shouldn't allow that. She was his little sister, true, but sometimes he'd need her to protect him. Like right now.

Mind made up, Ruby pointed in the same direction the walking icicle had gone. "Yeah, we met but we didn't partner up as we wanted to try and go on different teams. He went that way…"

She was a horrible liar, she knew that, yet the redhead drank it as easily as a child and ran off in the direction she was pointing at. All the more proof for her theory. She'd had to watch Jaune's back, and tell Yang. If they told Jaune he might try to solve things himself, but Mom and Dad told them how Faunus couldn't often fight back because humans would always force them down even more.

Not even two minutes later, Jaune's familiarly soft footsteps alerted her, and not a second later the boy stalked into view, sniffing the air and lighting up as soon as he saw her.

Ruby's eyes narrowed. She was going to protect him from all the meanies and baddies, Pirrá Nicos or whatever most of all.

/-/

"Wow, that was one heck of a long walk…" Ruby wheezed as they finally reached the ruined temple they were supposed to find. The young Rose was exhausted by the endless trip on uneven terrain. She could've crossed that same distance running and using her Semblance no problems, had there been no trees, and on an even surface. As it was, her legs were killing her, and she'd have to ask Jaune for a massage _and_ to turn her into a wolf later. That never failed to freshen her up.

No sooner that she appeared in the clearing, Yang was all over them both of them, checking for injuries like a mama hen. "Jaune, Ruby, are you okay? It took you two forever to get here!"

"We're fine, Yang, we just ran into a few packs of Beowolves." Ruby gave Jaune the stink eye. "And _someone_ chased them down like his life depended on it. No names."

Yang laughed and high-fived Jaune over their little sister's head. "Good job Jauney! By the way, how comes you two became partners?"

"Yes, I would like to know that as well," an all-too-familiar redhead stated calmly as she stepped into view. Ruby paled immensely as the spear-wielder smiled sweetly down at her with a look she was _sure_ was full of anger for having protected Jaune from her.

Jaune shrugged. "I scented her out. Was a bit confused for a while since there were so many smells in the forest, but I'd recognize my sisters' scents everywhere."

"Oh… so… you partnered up with her immediately…" Ruby shrank when the Nikos girl stared at her. Even more evidence that she wanted to hurt Jaune!

"S-Sorry, I guess I just wanted my _brother_ to be my partner?" she apologized meekly, though she did put emphasis on the word 'brother' so that the girl would _know_ she'd have to go through her.

She ignored the fact that said knowledge was making her knees tremble, though that was pretty understandable, given exactly who she was antagonizing.

"I… see…" The redhead's words were strained, just like her smile. She turned to look behind her. "Oh well… I ended up bumping into Blake on my way here, she and Yang were about to become partners before I walked into the clearing."

"And I ended up with…" Yang looked at the temple, where a certain white-haired b-… _lady with very poor manners_, was standing, glaring at them. "Ice Queen."

"You're lucky she can't hear you," a black-haired girl, _the_ black-haired girl from the day prior, stepped in. "My name is Blake Belladonna. I'm Pyrrha's partner. I never really caught your names yesterday as I was… focused on other things."

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that, my little siblings can be quite the hassle when they want to, or when they're nervous about meeting new people" grinned Yang, shrugging a shoulder and ignoring said siblings' embarrassed whines. "The name's Yang Xiao Long, kickass fighter and the best badass around! The little cinnamon roll is Ruby Rose, my little sister, and the lone wolf is Jaune Rose Xiao Long, my twin brother."

"NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNoraaaa!" an unknown girl with short orange hair shouted, popping up between Yang and Blake and scaring the hell out of everyone. Out of everyone's screams, Ruby's was the squeakiest while Jaune's was the most acute. "And that's Ren! We're together, but not together-together, we're partners but only like you all are!"

Said boy, tall with black hair and a pink lock on the side of his head, walked closer with a long-suffering sigh. "My apologies for her behaviour. My name is Lie Ren, and she is Nora Valkyrie. She tends to be a little too friendly with strangers."

"O-Oh… n-no worries," Jaune nodded slowly, still keeping an eye on the weird girl.

The same weird girl who then thought it appropriate to ask the question all the non-Rose, non-Xiao Long surnamed people were thinking whenever they looked at the blond wolf. "Hey, you're a Faunus right? I never saw a Faunus with more than one trait! Are you special? Oh!" The girl, Nora, gasped dramatically. "Are you the god of Faunus?!"

"What?! No!" Before Jaune could say anything else, Yang stepped in with a smile that was just a tad too wide to be anything but tense.

"Yes he's a Faunus, anyone's got a problem with that so I can turn their insides into their outsides?" she asked sweetly, not even bothering to hide her displeasure. When she saw Nora wilt in shame, not unlike how Ruby or Jaune sometimes did, she deflated. "Sorry. I didn't mean it like that, it's just…"

"You were watching out for him," Pyrrha said soothingly, placing a hand over her shoulder. "That means you're a good sister. You are letting him meet new people and making new friends while at the same time supporting him still. That's admirable."

Ruby's expression soured up at the taller redhead's words. Did she mean she wasn't a good sister because she hadn't allowed Pyrrha to find him? Well, if she wanted to shame her with words, then she could try all she wanted, Ruby'd never stop protecting her big brother from people who wanted to hurt him!

"Hehe, I guess it is," Yang beamed at the praise, frustrating Ruby with how easily she had been swayed on the redhead's side. Useless Yang!

"I suggest we take the relics and we go," the only other male aside from Jaune sighed. His name was Ren, if Ruby wasn't wrong. "There's no point in remaining here any longer."

"Yes there is!" Everyone but Yang and Ruby was startled by Jaune's sudden outburst, his sisters having expected it. "If we remain here maybe some more Beowolves are gonna show up!"

Ren's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, dread rising in the young boy. The others looked confused by the sudden change, until an awed voice spoke up.

"You… like Grimm hunting?" Nora said slowly, as if fearing he might disappear if she were to speak too fast.

"Mostly Beowolves and Gorehorns, but all kinds of Grimm are abominations that needs to be dealt with," he replied with steely determination.

Nora's eyes shone brightly.

"Yes! Renny, look, I have a Grimm hunting partner!" The girl moved too fast for anyone to stop her and swooped up the boy, crushing him in a spine-breaking hug that looked a little too tight for a hamster to survive, much less a tall and well-built healthy seventeen-year-old boy not used to such methods of killing.

Ruby was about to add Nora to the list of people to keep an eye on, when a bright flash of white light filled the temple's clearing, blinding everyone for a small instant. She heard Yang's amused snort, and she had to withhold her own giggle, knowing what the others didn't.

As the two of them expected, both Jaune and Nora had disappeared. Instead, two wolves were standing in their place. Jaune had turned into the usual impossibly huge wolf, while Nora was now a very confused-but-happy-looking grey wolf on all four.

Ren made a noise of surprise, as he was the only one who hadn't seen Jaune's Semblance before. "N-Nora?! Nora, where are you?!" he yelled, looking around, his calm attitude cracking for the first time. "What did you do to her?!"

His answer was a second flash of light, and Nora was back to her human form alongside Jaune. She pouted a bit at being back to human – and Ruby could honestly say she understood her. Being wolf was very funny if one just discarded their 'humanity' and accepted their 'wolfness'. Ren ran over to the girl and hugged her tightly, as if afraid she might disappear again.

For some reason, the girl's pout inverted into a wide smile at that. Go figure…

/-/

Ruby was acting weird.

Jaune didn't know exactly why he felt like that, but he felt it nonetheless. His little sister… big sister… his sister, was acting pretty weird, and it seemed to be mostly around the taller redhead. She seemed nervous, sometimes even afraid, but she also faced it bravely and tried to act normal.

And that trying was what made her act so weird. Jaune wondered if Yang had noticed it too, but then he realized she was too busy chatting it up with the tall redhead to notice anything more than the fact Ruby was safe and sound.

While the boy named Ren checked on that absolutely awesome girl, Nora, Jaune focused on Ruby and the tall girl – what was her name again? Pirna Neko? Whatever. _That girl_ had stepped closer to Ruby after his little lightshow, and he could well see how tense his sister was.

Normally, he'd have stepped closer as inconspicuously as possible, but the two of them seemed to be kind of staring at him, so that was not an option.

Well, thank Dust for better Faunus hearing.

Ugh, wolf hearing, whatever.

His little identity crisis dealt with, he began to eavesdrop.

"So, he's adopted, I guess?" Firra Nicko was saying.

"Well… yeah, neither of my parents is a Faunus," Ruby admitted with a small shrug, clearly trying to make herself as small as she could without crouching down. "We found him when I was six, and we've never been apart ever since. S-Sorry for the accident back in the forest…"

Jaune frowned. Why was Ruby lying? When she had to go to Signal, before she was homeschooled by Uncle Qrow, they _had_ been separated. And what accident was she talking about? She had told him nothing had happened.

Wait…

Did Ruby fight some Beowolves before he arrived?!

The mere thought of it made his blood boil. Not in anger at Ruby, but in anger at those little furry bastards – and in his wolf form he could actually call Beowolves little. Those little shits had died before he could rip their limbs and rend their flesh! That was just so unfair!

That settled it for him. They would all remain there until more Beowolves wandered into the clearing, and he'd take them all on by himself. And if someone dared steal even just one, he'd turn them all into wolves so he'd be the only one capable of fighting… well, Yang and Ruby could do something too but their clothes would hinder them. They could have the other types of Grimm if they wanted. Beowolves were his. Gorehorns too. They had the rest.

He chased those thoughts away and continued to eavesdrop. "It's… not a problem," Birra Dikos replied uneasily, and out of the corner of his eye he could see her shifting a little. "Ruby… would you mind answering a question?"

"Uhh… N-No, sure."

"Does… does he know who I am?"

At Nyrrha Pikos's words, Ruby went if possible even tenser, so much Jaune was honestly beginning to worry. She had just exerted her self on their walk there, her muscles should've had time to relax, not be put under more stress! He inwardly sighed. That meant massage and wolf, he just knew it.

"I… Uhh… I-I don't t-think so?" He could basically hear her wince. "S-Sorry, even I only know of you because of Yang and my friends at Signal… Jaune probably just forgot who you are."

"O-Oh!" This time he instead heard the surprise in Yrrha Ikos's voice. "That's… not a problem, believe me." A short, polite cough later had her regaining her composure. "I'm actually hoping to be on the same team as you two."

"O-Oh, r-really?" Ruby's squeak was all he received as warning before Ruby impacted him with the use of her Semblance, forcing him back a little. "Jaune, do you want to go hunting for Beowolves?"

He blinked at the sudden change of topic, but the temptation was just too much. "Sure! Nora and Ren could come along too, right? They love Grimm hunting!"

"Of course we do! We could team up for more Grimm kills!" Nora exclaimed, appearing beside them with a defeated-looking Ren close by. Jaune blinked again before realization dawned upon him. Nora had a teleportation Semblance! That was just so cool!

"That's fine!" Ruby nodded with a nervous grin, placing a solemn hand on his shoulder. "It's good to have backup when fighting Grimm! You never know when the next Grimm Apocalypse is going to hit!"

"Isn't that a game?" Ren asked, confused.

"What?! No! That's dream number eight-four-three!" Nora exclaimed. Exclaiming stuff seemed to be her MO when it came to speaking. She shivered in what appeared to be fear… but probably wasn't, given the near maniac grin on her face. "So many Grimm to smash…"

"That seems fun," Syrrha Aikos said with a smile, taking a step forwards. "May I join you? Maybe you could tell us more about your Semblance while we fight, Jaune – it is among the most peculiar I've ever seen."

The wolf winced when Ruby's hand began to crush his clavicle. "S-Sorry, but teams are formed by only four people – maybe you should go with Yang and the other two, so you can bond as a team too."

The girl's smile faltered, but at least his sister's grip wasn't as crushing as before. "W-Well, we still don't know how teams will be formed…" she offered weakly.

"T-That's true… Oh! That reminds me!" Ruby quickly freed Jaune from her newly tightening grip and rushed to take a relic from the temple's pillars. "I almost forgot," she admitted sheepishly, pocketing the chess piece – while at the same time wondering how no Grimm had disturbed the temple or anything, destroying the fragile-looking relics.

"Great! Now we can-"

_Growl_.

Nora cut herself off with an ecstatic smile on her face as a large Ursa lumbered into the clearing with a loud growl. The girl immediately deployed her hammer before stopping and glancing at Jaune. "Wanna prove your worth as my new Grimm hunting partner?" she asked with solemnity.

The boy nodded with just as much gravity. "Of course."

He stepped away from the others and grasped the two sickles attached to his back. The dark grey handles were a bit over three feet long, bending a little bit to the inside at the lower end. The blades were double, each sickle having two identical scythe-like silvery blades attached to the sides of the top end of the handles, making them look ever so slightly like claws – and also allowing the high-calibre rifle barrels to peek through between them. Each blade was about two feet long, and slightly less curved than Ruby's own scythe. On the outer side of each blade, a black rose emblem contrasted vividly against the pale silver background.

As opposite to Yang's and Ruby's weapons, his weren't mechashift. True, they were sickles _and_ guns, but they couldn't fold nor turn into something else. They couldn't _shift_. He kept them on his back as they were, criss-crossing each other to avoid the blades sticking out and inadvertently causing trouble.

Still, those were his weapons and he was damn proud of them.

Even though Ruby had been the one to build them.

And the one to design them.

And convince him of getting a weapon in the first place.

And convince Dad of having another one of his unarmed-fight-pupils taken away from him.

He shook those unwanted thoughts out of his head. It didn't matter how he got those, what mattered was that they were his weapons and he liked them almost as much as Ruby loved Crescent Rose, and that was way more than what people thought.

The Ursa growled again and took an earth-shaking step forwards, raising a giant paw to crush him or eviscerate him or-

Whatever. It never hit him anyway.

Jaune rolled under the monster and lashed out with his left sickle, cutting deep in the back of the Ursa's knee. Unfortunately, Grimm had no real distinction between flesh, organs or muscles, so it didn't collapse like a normal animal would've. Fortunately, it seemed Grimm still had some 'vital spots' to speak of, though normally hacking them to pieces worked as well.

Taking advantage of his far superior speed, Jaune pirouetted around the Ursa, striking again and again with each twirl, and probably also making it angry – he eventually didn't care as it would still die, angry or not. As soon as the boy stopped twirling, now back before the monster, it attacked again in the exact same way as before, with a diagonal swing from its left claw.

Ducking under the hit and feeling the displaced air brush against his face, Jaune hooked his weapon to the monster's arm and allowed himself to be thrown up in the air above the creature. Twisting his body so to face it as he fell, the boy swung his right sickle and sank it in the monster's neck before somersaulting over the Ursa, using the momentum to rip his weapon upwards and decapitate the Grimm.

He landed in a crouch, his right sickle still raised while his left one was laid against the ground to stabilize him.

Standing upright once the Ursa had dissipated, Jaune grinned at the others and nodded at Nora. "So? Am I a worthy Grimm hunting partner?"

"Mmh…" Nora held out a hand and moved it a little. "So-so. I guess you are qualified enough for the job. Though you'll have to leave the tough ones to me."

Jaune's expression darkened. Had his display of skill not been enough? Oh well, it wasn't like he was really all that unhappy about it. There was only one thing he needed to clarify. "I call dibs on any Beowolf or Gorehorn we meet. You are allowed to kill them only in real emergencies – and I'm talking about critical injuries or risk of death, no less. You can have the bigger ones as long as those are left to me. The Alphas too."

"Deal!" exclaimed Nora, grinning widely. "Those aren't fun anyway, they don't make any funny crunching sound when I smash them."

Ren looked at Ruby, hoping to find some kind of helpful or comforting reassurance on her eyes, but his hopes were utterly dashed by the wide smile she was sporting herself while cradling a massive red and black scythe to her chest. At that moment, the boy realized just how much in over his head he really was.

He was surrounded by psychos.

**_Poor Ren, and poor Kyrra... I mean, Pyrrha._**

**_Now, I know you are all gonna think this is OoCness on Ruby's and Pyrrha's part - it really isn't all that much. In canon it's implied (though never shown) that outside of Menagerie all Faunus are treated very poorly and discriminated against, so it'd make sense for Ruby to worry about Jaune._**

**_As for Pyrrha - like an author commented, she'd be ecstatic to find someone who can make her unrecognizable to her fans, and now she also knows he doesn't really know her. She's not being Yandere nor aggressive, that's just Ruby's imagination running wild - superspeed, bitches, superspeed. Her imagination runs VERY fast._**

**_And Yang. Someone commented on her being selfish for not wanting to be embarrassed by her siblings in front of Pyrrha. Nah. I mean, my sister loves me and my twin, but she never wanted us around whenever her friends came by or (God forbids) her crush or significant other. In this case Pyrrha is Yang's idol, a young prodigy known world-wide for being invincible in a fight - a title Yang really wants to challenge. It makes sense for her to try and support her siblings while at the same time not lose the cool and badass image she has._**

**_Btw, it's fun to come up with names for Pyrrha._**

**_Next up, surprise at the team assignment! Dun dun dun!_**

**_Until next time,_**

**_Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh_**


	5. First Day

**_Four days! Getting better... must really be the work I do. Anyway, here it is! Wink._**

**_EDIT: yes, I erroneously uploaded the wrong chapter instead of this. I blame work and family problems to that, and the fact I mistyped the name in Doc Manager._**

"Cardin Winchester, Russel Thrush, Dove Bronzewing, Sky Lark. The four of you retrieved the Black Bishop pieces. From this day forwards, you will work together as Team Cardinal, led by Cardin Winchester." Ruby squirmed anxiously as the four boys all bowed ever so slightly, and walked down the stage. The wait was killing her.

Even though that was the first team to be formed.

"Weiss Schnee, Yang Xiao Long, Lie Ren, Nora Valkyrie." Said four students walked up to the stage with various degrees of respect – from Weiss's and Ren's actual respect, to Yang's and Nora's barely perceivable kindness for not grinning like idiots. "The four of you retrieved the White Rook Pieces. From this day forwards, you will work together as Team Sylvan, led by Weiss Schnee."

Ruby saw Weiss grow at least three inches taller at being nominated the leader, and when the newly named Team SYLN walked off, she was sure the lack of heel's clacking was due to the fact the girl was floating a foot from the ground.

Then her smile froze. Wait, if Ren and Nora were on that team…

"Ruby Rose."

Who was on hers?"

"Pyrrha Nikos."

No. No. Noooooooooo!

"Blake Belladonna."

He was doing it on purpose! _'At least save Jaune, at least save Jaune, at least save-'_

"Jaune Rose Xiao Long."

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!

"The four of you retrieved the White Bishop pieces. From this day forwards, you will work together as Team Raspberry," announced the Headmaster, seemingly oblivious to the torturous words he was uttering. "Led by Ruby Rose."

Yes! She could order Mirra Pickyos to stay the elf away from Jaune!

"It seems this is shaping up to be an… interesting year."

_'Oh, you have no idea, you heartless team-maker!'_

/-/

"So, this is our dorm. It's… nice. Gives a homey feeling," Ghirra Chickos stated, a little uncertain, as the four of them stepped into the bare dorm. Four beds, four dressers, four tables with four chairs, and a lateral door which they assumed was a bathroom.

Homey her boot.

That was the bare minimum. Oh well. Ruby Rose was a master at making things feel less awkward and more welcoming… but not tonight. "Okay team, it's time to… sleep." Grabbing Jaune by the arm, she bolted for the far left bed, the closest to the bathroom, and threw both of them on it. "Goodnight!"

Blake raised an eyebrow. "Are you two going to sleep in the same bed?"

"Well, duh, yeah. That's what we've done for the past nine years or so," shrugged Jaune, not really seeing the problem while Ruby's cheeks darkened at what she had just done.

She'd just meant to keep him away from that redhead girl, not to imply anything! Even though that was the actual truth, they _did_ share a bed -usually with Yang too- for as long as she could remember, she wasn't as sheltered as Jaune and she could perfectly understand what Blake was implying.

"Y-Yeah, but j-just sleep!" Ruby exclaimed, red as a tomato.

Jaune blinked. "Yeah, that's kind of what beds are made for…"

"Before we sleep, may I suggest we share something about ourselves to get to know each other better?" Firra offered with an easy smile. An easy smile Ruby could see through, right to her wish to know more about her target.

She'd never considered that, but what if Pintra had also some assassin skills?

"That's… actually a pretty good idea," nodded Jaune. Ah, the poor oblivious soul didn't know what she was trying to do. Well, as leader, it'd be her duty to-

"I guess it _is_ due, given how we'll have to live and work together for the next four years," sighed Blake, hanging her head in exhaustion. "Ruby, you're the leader, why don't you go first?"

"W-What?"

"Why don't we go in the same order as our names in our team name?" offered Jaune, making everyone blink in confusion for a second before the suggestion settled in.

"That's… a very good idea!" smiled Cirrá, beaming at him before turning to her. "So, Ruby, can you tell us something about yourself?"

"Uh… uhm… w-well, my name's Ruby Rose, I am fifteen and up until three days ago I went to Signal," she began uneasily. Then she shook her head and truly smiled. Even if that girl wanted to know more about Jaune, it wasn't like she could hurt him by knowing he liked meat, now could she? "Then I stopped a robbery and-"

"Got a no-cookies detention for a week," Jaune filled in chuckling.

"-and then I was invited to Beacon by the Headmaster himself!" Ruby continued, ignoring the scarlet hue on her cheeks. "My weapon is Crescent Rose, an awesome scythe-sniper rifle hybrid I made myself. I like cookies, strawberries, and weapons!"

"Not all to eat, I hope," Blake said quietly, making the girl blush a bit more.

"Well, my name is Pyrrha Nikos-"

"Wait, _Pirra Nicos_?" asked Jaune, frowning. "How's that spelled?"

"Uhm… P-y-r-r-h-a N-i-k-o-s." She stared at him as he oohed in realization before nodding for her to go on. "I… uh, well I am from Mistral, and I'm seventeen. I like challenges, and the colour red. My weapons are Miló and Akouo, and my favourite food is blackberry fruit cake."

Jaune made a face at the mention of blackberries. "Stupid thorns. They prickle all over my fur every time I run into one." Once he felt everyone's eyes on him, he scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "Uhh… when I'm a wolf?"

"That'd make sense," the black-haired girl accepted his explanation. "My name is Blake Belladonna, seventeen, Gambol Shroud is my weapon, a hybrid of handgun, kusarigama and katana, and the sheathe can double as a cleaver. I like the colour black, reading, and fish dishes."

"Finally me! My name's Jaune Rose Xiao Long, seventeen, wolf Faunus. I was adopted almost ten years ago by Ruby's parents. I have so many wolf traits because of my Semblance, which allows me to turn myself or others into wolves. My weapons are Lunar Crescents, two rifle-sickles hybrids with no mechashift. Ruby implanted them with a recoil handler which allows me to nullify or increase the recoil of the weapon, in case I need it." The boy shrugged. "I like silver, purple, red, black, and yellow, 'cause they're my sisters' colours. I like to hunt in wolf form and I like any meat-based food as long as the meat makes up the majority of it. Ruby got me to have an acquired liking for cookies, but otherwise I'm not a fan of other fruit-y, cheese-y, food or stuff. Oh, and I like comics too."

"That's really nice, I too like comics!" said the now named Pyrr… Pirr… How was that spelled again? Oh, right, Pyrrha. Ruby's eyes narrowed. Was she trying to get all mushy-mushy with Jaune by calling in a shared liking, and then stab in the moment he turned his back to her? Well, no! She would be there to prevent that then!

"I like comics too!" she chirped excitedly. "Jaune and I spend _hours_ reading comics together!"

"That's the second thing a bed's for!" nodded her brother, earning looks from the two non-sibling members of the team. "Oh… y'know, sleeping, reading comics, napping, studying when you're feeling lazy, snacking on cookies, under it's for hiding when it's shower time, hiding over it when the boogeyman is searching for you. That's what beds are for!"

"Yep and now we should make full use of these for the first option!" Ruby exclaimed, plopping back down on the bed. "Nighty night!"

There was a second of silence.

"Uh, Rubes, shouldn't we change in our pyjamas?"

/-/

Ruby woke up, as usual, with Jaune's face pressing into the top of her head and her face buried in his upper chest. He was warm, as usual. If she'd woken up, it also meant he'd woken up already, taken his morning run on his own -possibly freaking some people out-, taken a shower and gone back to sleep until she woke up. That was usually how he spent the three hours between five and eight – unless it was on cold days, when dragging him out of bed was a Yang-ish feat few managed. Ruby had learned the trick was to prepare bacon and sausages for breakfast, and let him smell them.

That usually got him up faster than Yang got angry.

The only problem was actually succeeding in sneaking out of bed to prepare breakfast, now that they didn't have any way of making it in their dorm – and she wasn't sure even Jaune's olfactory senses could smell breakfast all the way from the mess hall.

She _could_ go and ask the cooks to give her some to-go breakfast for her to bring back in order to wake him up, but that was way too boring. She'd much rather just wake him up the normal way.

Which was not waking him up at all, and letting him sleep for a bit longer. Besides, she was far too energetic not to squirm and move a little when awake, so he'd wake up pretty soon anyway.

Before she could squirm to get in a more comfortable position, though, she noticed she was by far not the first person up.

Blake was already awake and reading a book, bow on her head and amber eyes fixed on the pages. Ruby hadn't taken her for one to wake up early, rather the night owl who would sleep all morning, but she was happy to be wrong, for once. That'd mean they'd get better sleep at night, and that they wouldn't risk waking her up in the mornings – especially since they were going to have school in the mornings.

But something else was what attracted her attention the most. Jade eyes were staring at her with the intensity of… no, okay, there was no real intensity in those eyes… but maybe it was because she was too lost in murderous thoughts about Jaune to really focus on staring!

Yes, she was talking about Pyrrha Nikos, and this time she even got her name right!

That girl stared at them for a quarter of a second longer, before her gaze went on to whatever she was looking at on her Scroll. Ruby's eyes narrowed. They were without doubt her plans to get Jaune alone to kill him and get rid of the body. Well, she wouldn't allow that!

She snuggled closer to Jaune, sending Nikos a very meaningful glare – too bad she didn't even turn to see said glare.

Sensing her movements, Jaune yawned and began to stir, attracting Pyrrha's eyes once more to the two of them. Cracking one eye open, he peeked at her. "G'd morning, little sis."

"Morning Jaune," Pyrrha greeted him before she could, making her eye twitch. It was almost as if she'd been waiting for him to wake up just to say good morning – which was pretty weird, since she was planning on hurting him. Maybe she wanted to make him feel safe so she'd have less trouble attacking him later?

That was weird. Now Ruby knew she didn't have any assassin experience. Any good assassin would know Jaune was already feeling safe and secure and not at all on edge. The fact Pyrrha continued to focus on him instead of facing the cold hard truth of Ruby's protective presence was a clear sign Pyrrha still thought she needed to get closer to her target first.

Like hell she would.

Ruby would make sure of that.

Untangling herself from Jaune and the sheets, Ruby stood up, yawned, and stretched. Once she was done being adorable, she already had a battle plan: she'd keep Jaune nearby at all times, to prevent Pyrrha from doing anything. If she couldn't fight her head-on, then she'd make her goal impossible. First, she'd have to take a shower.

And then she realized why no plan survived contact with the enemy.

How was she supposed to take a shower, without leaving Jaune alone with Pyrrha? Blake wouldn't help, either, as she too disliked the two of them.

Ugh, why couldn't they have ended up with Nora? She sounded fun, friendly, and most of all, _normal_. Not an assassin who had made it her goal to harm her brother, nor some weird emo girl with even less social skills than she did.

"I'm going to go for a light jog before breakfast," Pyrrha announced, sliding her Scroll shut and standing up. "Jaune, do you want to come with me? Blake? Ruby?"

"No, thanks," was Blake's laconic response.

"Nah, I already had a run earlier, no sense in overdoing," Jaune declined with a shrug, and Ruby felt as if a miracle had just happened.

Pyrrha Nikos was going _out of the dorm_ for a job – which meant she had her time to shower. While Blake didn't like Jaune, the girl still had made no move to hurt him nor she looked like she would… honestly, she didn't even look like she'd move for the next hour or so, absorbed in her book as she was.

Ruby took her time gathering her clothes, just to see if the girl had _actually_ gone for a jog or if she'd just been waiting for her to go take a shower before jumping at Jaune. Eventually, the redhead nodded, satisfied with the wait, and went to the bathroom to take a shower.

Unlike her homework, her showers were calm and relaxed, instead of frenetic and hurried. Sure, she still didn't take nearly as much as Yang, but that was more need than wish. Yang's hair was a nightmare to deal with, brush, and dry every morning. Still, she spent at least three times what Jaune took in a shower. Again, though, that might've had something to do with the fact Jaune didn't particularly like showers. It wasn't like he _hated_ being wet, it was more like he considered it a waste of time.

He was a wolf, after all, not a cat.

After a good shower, the three of them wasted time reading books and comics, Blake and the siblings respectively, until Pyrrha came back from her jog and reminded them of breakfast. After an eating contest pancakes-sausages between Nora and Jaune -with Team SYLN being dragged all the way over by Nora and Yang-, the eight of them finally headed to Grimm Studies, the first class of the day.

It was gonna be epic!

/-/

It was _so_ boring!

How could a single person be so mindboggingly _boring_ when talking about Grimm and how to kill them?! That was supposed to be a fun subject, not… _this_!

Ruby liked stories. She _loved_ them. She had memorized every single story her father, mother and uncle had ever told her. Even the ones Uncle Qrow told when drunk, tales usually involving fights with his 'lower sword' and stuff like that. Just as usually, Uncle Qrow promptly became sober as soon as her mother got wind of what he'd told the kids.

But this? This was as boring as Maths. Professor Peter Port had begun the lesson rather well, by arriving later than most students. Then he had arrived, and the lesson had went downhill. At a certain point, somehow, Port had even managed to sneak in a large, shaking cage from within which came growls. How had the students missed that, no one could explain.

And then Jaune had volunteered to fight.

A few other students had raised their hands as well, but Port had seemed to take a liking to the way Jaune and Nora were literally hopping on their feet to be chosen – and since Nora was sitting straight behind Jaune and Jaune was way taller, he'd chosen the boy for a small fight with the Grimm within.

Jaune had gotten geared up and ready, and then the cage had been opened, revealing a…

Boarbatusk.

She could perfectly see Jaune's shoulders slump in disappointment. No Beowolves for him to kill, which was basically as bad as no cookies for her to eat.

Before her eyes, the Boarbatusk roared and charged Jaune head-on, with the boy sighing and resigning to his fate. With a somersault, he landed behind the creature, making it turn and charge again. This time, the boy sidestepped the Grimm and used his left sickle to trip it, sending it rolling into its own cage.

With a grin, Jaune entered the cage, and closed the cage door behind him, disappearing from view.

After a second, the cage began to shake again, this time more violently. At first there were roars and growls, but as the seconds trickled by they became squeals and whines, a clear sign of how the battle was going, hidden from everyone's eyes. Half the class was watching in amazement, half in worry, half in slight disgust at the barbaric method, half weren't watching at all, and half were still sleeping from Port's tale, for a grand total of five halves of the class…

Ruby had never really been great at Maths, but she was pretty sure halves weren't supposed to be five when talking about classes.

Eventually, Jaune got out of the cage and sent a challenging grin Nora's way. "Is _this_ good enough for Grimm hunting?"

"Haha, that's the spirit, my boy!" Ruby winced as Port delivered an unexpected pat on Jaune's back, and only his wolf instincts kept the boy from falling over. "But remember, the monsters you are used to fight are just the small fries! If Beowolves were the strongest Grimm in the world, then we'd have conquered the Grimmlands a long, long time ago."

"Oh oh oh oh, what are some more powerful Grimm?!" Nora exclaimed, jumping up and down her chair.

"Well… Goliaths are the most common Team-class Grimm," smiled Port, uncaring of the fact the bell had begun to ring. "They are divided into Civilian-class, Trainee-class, Team-class, Hunter-class, Legend-class. Beowolves, Boarbatusks, Creeps and Ursai are all Civilian-class, as a civilian could, with a bit of luck, kill one of them with no Aura. Of course, it'd be a very close match anyway, so any of you can take on packs of these without much trouble. King Tajitsu, Deathstalkers, Alpha Beowolves, Ursai Major, Nevermores, Ancient Deathstalkers, Giant Nevermores, Hydras and Dark Hydras, and Griffons and Alpha Griffons are all Trainee-class Grimm, so any of you would be able to take down one, but it'd be a very close match. Goliaths are a Team-class Grimm."

"What about the Hunter class and the Legend class?" asked Nora, and for the first time since entering the class, all the students were listening.

"I'm afraid this will have to wait, Ms Valkyrie! I doubt any of you know any Hunter or Legend class Grimm, so mentioning them would not give you an idea as of why they are so dangerous." Port laughed heartily at the students' downtrodden expressions. "Don't worry, we will soon be studying some of these Grimm, because by the end of the month there will be an exam on the differences between these classes!"

"The difference? That's pretty easy, they're divided by strength," a student a few rows up pointed out. He was a pretty bulky guy, with reddish brown hair cropped really short and small blue eyes fixed on the teacher. "You said that just now."

"Strength is what they are divided by, but the differences do not stop here. Please don't write that in your exam, or I'll be forced to give you a bad grade!" The Professor laughed again and shooed them out of the classroom with his hands. "Now go, you have other classes to attend today, and I don't want to hold you here for too long. Have a good first day!"

Ruby hopped out of her seat and sped over to her brother, followed by Yang, Nora and Pyrrha. As usual, her siblings high-fived each other over her head, but she'd gotten used to that. What was important, was to keep Pyrrha not alone with him, and she'd succeeded in her goal.

"That was a good fight, Jaune. Are you okay?" Unfortunately, that wouldn't keep Pyrrha from talking with Jaune. And given how clueless he was…

"I'm fine, thanks," Jaune replied curtly before returning to smile and laugh with Yang and Nora, shocking Ruby.

Jaune, being rude like that? What in the world… Had he noticed Pyrrha's ill intentions? If that was the case, then maybe her job wouldn't be as hard!

/-/

That Pyrrha girl was definitely bullying Ruby, he was sure of that. She made his sister uncomfortable even just by being in the same room as her. And despite Ruby being normally a very physical person with her siblings, she'd never been that clingy, which meant she was seeking comfort.

All because of Pyrrha.

He could see how it had happened. When they had knocked her and Weiss over, Weiss had pointed out _her_ age difference, not his. From what he'd been told by Yang, Pyrrha was a prodigy, so being told that Ruby had been pushed up two years while she hadn't probably hurt her pride or whatever. Hadn't Ruby been Yang's sister, she too would've probably gotten a bit upset at being on the same level as someone two years younger than her.

But then why had she looked for _him_ as partner… She could've searched for Ruby instead, making it easier for her to bully her…

Of course!

"Out of my way, animal," a gruff voice spoke up as he was shoved to the side to let a bulky student walk by with a sneer on his face.

Whoops, he'd been blocking the way without noticing. Anyway, where was he? Oh, right, the partnering up. Pyrrha wanted him as partner, because she knew that as Ruby's brother he'd always be on her side, and she hoped becoming his partner would even the playing field. Like hell it would've, but that didn't matter as he did not, in fact, partner up with Pyrrha.

Was that why Ruby had been so squirmy that morning? Pyrrha _had_ been watching them when he woke up the second time, so maybe that was it? She was nervous?

That didn't really make sense. Ruby could be nervous about talking with people, but fighting? Fighting was her domain, like cookies and comics. She didn't seek fights like Yang, but she wasn't afraid of wielding her beloved Crescent Rose against people – like the robbery two days prior had confirmed.

Yet again, Pyrrha was very very strong, and while Taiyang always said none of his children had inherited his level-headedness, he was pretty sure Ruby wouldn't rush into a fight she couldn't win.

Probably.

Well, he hoped so, at least, because a fight between Ruby and someone she couldn't defeat wouldn't be pretty to watch.

And then again, in class she'd rushed down to him, and Pyrrha was right behind her. From someone who, going by what Yang said, was way stronger than him, such praise _was_ a tiny bit suspicious. Ruby, Yang and Nora, they were expected. Add to that the fact she was worried about him, after a fight with just a Boarbatusk, and that was it.

Since she hadn't been able to partner up with him, she was trying to get in his good graces to have him on her side while she bullied his little sister.

No way in hell.

As his team, plus Yang and Nora, entered History's classroom, he felt a foreboding feeling of dread, of the ones he only felt when Ruby was about to grab him and high-speed him somewhere with her.

Two point seven seconds later, he was proven correct when a green-haired, spectacled man zapped into the room at a speed he could barely keep up with – and he had Ruby as little sister.

"Good morning, little rascals, my name is Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck, and I'm your History Professor! In this class we will learn the history of our kingdom as well as the others, the important events, battles and factions in the history of our planet." The man grabbed a Thermos from his desk and took a long sip directly from it, making Jaune wince. Coffee in Thermos was usually steaming hot… he felt bad for the man. "Now, are there any questions before we start?"

He began to raise his hand, to ask him to slow down in his talk. Before his hand was halfway up, the man continued.

"Capital! Now, open your textbooks at page eleven, and use them to take notes. The first topic we will talk about will be the Great War, the Vytal Festival and all the consequences of the war, including economical ones and political ones." Oobleck took another sip of scorching-hot coffee. "Now, who can tell me what kingdom is most at fault for the start of the Great War?"

Two seats to his right and two up, Pyrrha's hand shot up. "Yes, Ms Nikos?"

"Atlas, back then known as Mantle. Their official reasons were counterattacking Mistral after a pro-Faunus movement had destroyed one of Mantle's battleships, but the actual motives are probably related to Mantle's expansionist mindset, which can be found even after the War, as the newly formed Atlas was the last kingdom to sign the Vytal Treaty and end the war, after the three other kingdoms had threatened to raze Mantle to the ground instead of just bombing it."

Yikes. Jaune winced. That sounded pretty bad. And Weiss was from Atlas? Now a lot of things made sense.

"Capital, Ms Nikos! Very good. And who can tell me which was the first battle Vale fought in the war?" the man asked again, and again Pyrrha's hand shot up. This time, though, Weiss's hand went up as well. "Ms Belladonna?"

Blake? She'd raised her hand?

"Vale intervened in Mistral's aid two years after the start of the war, officially being the last kingdom to join, during the Battle of Argus, back then a small city in Northern Anima." Blake barely looked up from the textbook as she answered the question. "That wasn't the first battle Vale fought _because_ of the war, though. The first King of Vale during the war apparently sympathized with Mantle, and a civil war raged in Vale for almost a year and a half before the king was dethroned and a new one took his place. She was the one who, at the end of the war, was the first to choose to renounce to the throne and create a Council instead."

"Very, very good Ms Belladonna. Now, as Ms Nikos already stated, the war began…"

Jaune tuned out the rest.

/-/

Pyrrha Nikos didn't know what she was doing wrong. True, she had never really had friends, so she wasn't the most experienced of people, but she was pretty sure she had done nothing to earn scorn from half of her teammates. Blake didn't count, as she ignored pretty much everyone and everything around her. With a disconsolate sigh, she drained her glass.

Back during Initiation, she understood why Ruby had tricked her, and she forgave her. She had just wanted to be sure to be on her brother's team. She was new and younger than anyone else, so it made sense she'd try to hang onto who she knew. What surprised and confused -and hurt her a little, to be honest- was how Ruby seemed to be wary of her, and seemed to try and keep herself always between Jaune and her.

Even the 'sleeping in the same bed' thing hadn't fazed her. She had no siblings, but she guessed it was normal for some people. Maybe it was a childhood habit they had never grown out of. But the glares she caught being sent in her direction by the shorter redhead weren't expected. Nor was the cold shoulder Ruby gave her – or well, as cold as she could be, being a cinnamon roll and all that.

She couldn't understand what she'd done to make a nice and sweet girl such as Ruby dislike her so much. Was she afraid she held a grudge against them because of the accident in the locker room? That was impossible, she'd shown no aggressive behaviour at all, even worrying over Jaune after his fight!

Oh, and Jaune…

She sighed as she poured herself another glass. He'd started out pretty friendly, so why did he turn away her concerns after the fight? Did he think she believed him weak? That was impossible, she'd never be like that! And if he didn't like the praise, then why would he accept it from that girl… Nora? She could understand accepting praise from his siblings, but Nora was even more of a stranger than she was.

And so here she was, drinking her pains away.

"Hey there, hot stuff, wanna some company?" A heavy body landed on the bench beside her, and three more people took seats at her table. The guy who had spoken grinned at her. She vaguely remembered him from the team naming ceremony. Cardin Winchester, team leader of Team CRDL. "Watcha ya doing?"

Pyrrha considered not answering for a second. She wasn't really in the mood for talk, but that was what the goal of drinking, wasn't it? So that she could talk about her pains, and let them fade. Either that, or knock herself unconscious by having one too many drinks. Figuring that, in her state, most people would just admit instead of trying to deny the obvious, she shrugged. "Drinking to forget."

The effect it had on Cardin wasn't the one she expected.

He frowned at her in disbelief before his eyebrows almost disappeared up in his hair. "Drinking to forget… with apple juice?"

She shrugged and looked at him. "Yeah, why?"

The boy stared at her for a little while longer before slowly getting up, followed by his team, and stepping back. "Okay… look, if you want to have something more effective to drink, you know where you can find us. I'll leave you to your… drinking."

Pyrrha watched him leave. That was weird.

She glanced down at the bottles of apple juice on her table. The mess hall was almost empty by then, but her team and source of her pains hadn't left yet. Shrugging, she reached for another bottle and unscrewed the cap, pouring herself another glass, thinking about Cardin's offer.

More effective drinks? To be honest, the only thing she'd managed to get from apple juice was a stomach ache, and her pains were still very much there. Maybe she'd take him up on his offer. He seemed to know more than she did. And well, it wasn't like she knew much.

Her mother never really told her _what_ people drank to ease their pains. Maybe there was more than one choice of drink that did the job.

**_I love writing naive people. It's just too funny. Having people try to get drunk with apple juice? Must be the stupidest thing I've ever had a character do._**

**_So, the 'bullying Pyrrha' plotline is going on, and we see that not everything is how it seems... at all._**

**_Poor poor Ruby. Doesn't she know being adorable isn't enough to protect her big brother?_**

**_Team names, so you know: Team SYLN (Sylvan) and Team RPBJ (Raspberry). For SYLN, I was about to name them WNRY (Winery) using their first names' letters, but then I chose SYLN instead._**

**_Bit of worldbuilding with Oobleck never hurts~_**

**_"Doctor!"_**

**_...where did that come from?_**

**_Until next time,_**

**_Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh_**


	6. Fake Bullies and Real Bully

**_Huhh... okay, okay, fine, this update is probably late, but it's so comedic it'll make up for it. For the next two weeks I'll be having a friend coming over from Italy, so I'll be unlikely to update much. Also, I'm reading other fics in the HTTYD fandom (and I'm seriously considering making a HTTYD story too!) so that takes up some of my time. Hiccstrid for life of course._**

**_And now, onto the madness!_**

Jaune ignored the others' looks as he wolfed down his lunch. So what if he was a fast eater? At least he'd learned how to properly use the cutlery, as opposite to Weiss. Seriously, what was the point of eating a hot meal if then she had to cut it to tiny pieces and eat it cold? It took her half the lunch break just to be ready to eat! That girl seriously needed a lesson on how to eat. Food was supposed to be chewed by teeth, not by fork and knife!

…maybe her teeth were so weak she had to cut her food to pea-sized bits? He'd give it some thought, but maybe he could ask the cooks to prepare some sliced food for people like her in the future. They seemed good enough people. The cooks, not Weiss, of course.

"Are you even tasting that?" said snow heiress commented, quite disgusted, distracting him from his literal mountain of chicken nuggets. He tried to reply the best he could with a dozen or so nuggets in his mouth, but apparently it wasn't good enough because her disgust heightened. "Ugh, don't talk with your mouth full!"

"Hey, calm down Ice Queen, you're the one who asked him a question while he was eating," Yang intervened heatedly, glaring at her team leader.

Jaune quickly swallowed everything in his mouth. "Hey, hey, hey, it's no problem!" he tried to calm them down. Ice and Fire were never a good match, especially for someone with fur like him. "And Weiss yes, I am tasting them. I just prefer to eat them before they get cold."

She scoffed and returned to mince her food into tiny cubes.

"Anyway, anyone excited for today?" Yang grinned, impaling a piece of her waffle and dipping it into her baked beans before stuffing it in her mouth. "It'f the firft 'ay of fombat flass."

It was her turn to be glared at by Weiss. "And what's _your_ excuse, now?"

She shrugged and gulped down her food. "Totally not sorry. Besides, you all understood."

"Eat and speak at different times."

"You're not my mother."

"I'm your team leader."

"Which doesn't mean you can tell me how to eat."

"Yes I can!"

"No you can't!"

"I believe we should focus on Yang's question instead of wasting the lunch break arguing," Ren suggested calmly, entirely focused on his Spring rolls. He dipped a piece into a white and green coloured sauce and ate it slowly, uncaring of the fact everyone was waiting for him to continue. Once he had swallowed, he began to cut another roll while he spoke. "While I do not take pleasure in fighting for the sake of fighting, our reason for being here is to become stronger – no matter what we wish to do with that strength. And the best way to improve ourselves is to test ourselves against others. I will be looking forward to-"

"Oh come on, don't be such a killjoy!" exclaimed Yang, a little exasperated. "I get not everyone's an adrenaline junkie but you make fighting sound boring!"

The boy shrugged. "It is not among my hobbies, no."

Nora scoffed and grinned. "But it's among mine! I'm soooo excited, we'll get to fight things that can actually fight back instead of just taking hits and pulverizing!"

"Wow, I didn't think I'd ever hear you use a word as complex as 'pulverizing'," Weiss commented dryly.

"Weiss, don't be such a butt!" complained Ruby. "Besides, she's right! Right, Yang?"

The blonde nodded. "Yup. Fighting is fun. I'm not saying I always want to fight but Combat Class is definitely gonna be my favourite class." She shoved more food into her mouth and continued, "And not just because of the fighting, either! My father always say it's hard to lie while you're fighting, so fights are a good way to see how people actually are. If they are friendly or hostile and all that, because in a fight they never hold their selves back. That way I can make a list of the people to keep away from my little siblings."

"Yaaaang!"

"I have a question," Blake cut in, barely glancing away from her tuna salad. "Isn't Jaune your twin?"

"Officially yes, but I'm a bit younger than her so she'll never let that go," grumbled the boy, chewing his nuggets viciously.

"Exactly," nodded Yang. "Oh, by the way, does anyone else here have siblings? I mean, we make up almost half of us and we're all siblings! What about you? Any embarrassing youngsters or boring older?"

Blake and Ren shrugged. Nora didn't say anything. Surprisingly, Weiss was the one who spoke up. "Yes, I have two siblings. One is Winter, she's five years older than me and currently works in the Atlas military as the youngest Specialist in the history of Atlas."

"Which isn't much since Atlas was born after the Great War," Blake mumbled quietly.

"Nevertheless, it's quite the accomplishment," the heiress snapped back before collecting herself. "I also have a younger brother, Whitley, who is currently thirteen and studying to become a businessman."

"Ugh, sounds boring," huffed Yang.

Weiss's eye twitched. "He is only thirteen, Yang, and he's already decided what he wants to study and how. He's shown a lot of maturity already, and while his behaviour does annoy me from time to time, the same could be said for you, and you're a seventeen year old woman who should hold the responsibility of the world," she snapped, eyes blazing coldly.

Yang grinned. "See? Was it so hard? That's how you make people sound interesting."

The Ice Queen stared at her incredulously for a second more before she huffed again and turned away, eliciting a round of laughter from them.

Blake seemed to relax just enough to speak up again. "So, how are you doing, as a team? I guess you've had a lot of fights…"

"Surprisingly, no." Weiss shook her head before turning to face the black-haired girl. "Ren and I seem to be able to contain Nora and Yang. I must admit, Ren more than me. While we did argue, it never degenerated into a real verbal fight."

"Dege-what now?" Ruby whispered to Jaune.

"De-gene-rated, it means rated based on the genes or genetics," he explained wisely.

"Ohh…" The shorter girl nodded in realization before frowning. "But… that doesn't make any sense…"

"Though not for lack of trying on her part," Yang stage-whispered to her siblings, who giggled.

The heiress cleared her throat. "I am not the one who listened to rock music at full volume in the middle of the night."

Yang shrugged. "Buy yourself headphones, I've always done that, plus Ren and Nora never complained."

"How did you solve that?" asked Jaune.

"We just settled for waking Yang up at an early hour and telling her that if she kept her music, we'd keep the early alarm," explained Ren, sipping his water. "She didn't appreciated waking up at half past four."

Ruby and Jaune winced at the mention of such an ungodly hour. Half past four in the morning even wasn't in the list of possible wake-up hours.

"What about you?" inquired the boy. "I see your partner is not here, Blake."

The addressed girl shrugged. "I don't know why, but she's over there, drinking apple juice." She jerked her head toward a lone table in the cafeteria, where the redhead sat, surrounded by bottles of juice. "It's a miracle she hasn't given herself an indigestion already."

Everyone nodded in agreement. Truly, she had to have an iron stomach – which could actually be true, given the chiselled abs she had.

Speaking of said girl, Jaune was happy she hadn't sat at their table. Ruby looked way more relaxed without her around, and if Ruby was relaxed so was he. He just wished Ruby would be comfortable enough to talk about it soon, because he really didn't want to see his little sister continue to be bullied.

And on that topic, he turned to look at the girl, who was happily devouring cookies after eating her vegetables – though the green pile on the floor next to their bench spoke of a different story. "About Pyrrha…"

"Regarding Pyrrha…" Weiss corrected with a sigh.

"Yeah yeah, regarding Pyrrha, how are you two… getting along?"

Ruby shrugged with a mouthful of cookie. "Pfetty goof. We fon't fistfuff each othef. Bafely falk." The heiress glared at her with a look of pure ice. She shivered and swallowed fearfully. "Sorry. I said we're good, just not talking much."

"Which could be said for us and Blake too," Jaune pointed out, glancing at the black-haired cat-smelling girl. "But it doesn't mean we hate each other."

"Not hating each other and being friends is not the same," Ren helpfully noticed, raising an eyebrow when all three of them shrugged. "Let me get this straight – you are a team, and only two of you talk to each other?"

"Hey, what if we just don't have anything to talk about?" Jaune snapped on the defensive, cowering slightly when _everyone_ but Ruby stared at him. "What? It's true! What could we possibly talk about?"

"Maybe about the fact you're being bullied?" Blake offered with a glare that was probably meant more for said 'bully' than him.

The boy sighed exasperated and rolled his eyes. "I'm telling you, I'm not being bullied, okay? Cardin's just messing around. He's like that to everyone, you know?"

"But with you, he's even worse," Ruby was quick to support Blake, looking at him as if she was scolding him. "He's a stupid jerk and a bully."

"Oh come on," huffed the wolf. "Name one occasion when he's overstepped a line."

Weiss chose that moment to step in. "He 'accidentally' bumps into you every time you two meet in the halls."

"Bumping shoulders is a common way for friends to greet each other on the way, you know?" he replied defensively.

"You knocks your things out of your hands every time he can," Ren added.

"And I can just pick them back up – what's the problem with that?"

"He tossed you into a locker and sent you into the Emerald Forest," Yang pointed out.

"And I thanked him for that!" Jaune nodded cheerfully. "I killed a lot of Beowolves on my way back."

Nora finally had enough. "He's a jerky jerk and he's a mean meanie! He even calls you an animal because of your Faunus traits!"

Jaune shrugged and stuffed a nugget into his mouth. "Well, he's not wrong, is he?"

Silence.

/-/

"Well, he's not wrong, is he?"

Blake Belladonna had seen many subjugated Faunus resigned to their destiny, but never before she'd heard one so hopelessly oppressed to actually _agree_ with their offenders. In the wake of Nora's surprising but very appreciate defence of the Faunus, she hadn't expected for Jaune to be so used to being called an animal.

Suddenly, she reviewed all their interactions in a whole new light. That was why he'd acted like a real wolf before Initiation – he'd been _brainwashed_ into thinking he was an actual wolf!

Those two girls hadn't _adopted_ him – they'd taken him from a loving, caring _Faunus_ family and then broke him into thinking himself an animal. Maybe that was even why he'd gotten such a weird Semblance. Semblances were supposed to reflect the character of their wielders, so if the user thought himself an actual wolf, it made sense for his Semblance to allow him to turn into a wolf, albeit one bigger than a horse.

Was that why he hadn't recognized her as another Faunus? Had he been kept away from all Faunus for so long he'd forgotten how they smelled like? He'd treated her as a cat – had they brainwashed him into thinking _all_ Faunus were animals?

She bristled. She wouldn't stand for that. She would save that innocent Faunus from the claws of those evil humans. Ruby… she'd really fooled her with that innocent act. Innocent her mouth-watering ass! An innocence so fake it was a shock it wasn't illegal! And Yang… not that she knew the girl much, but the nerve of her! Defending Jaune's behaviour back before Initiation, dismissing it as mere 'social awkwardness'… she was hiding her doing!

A sick feeling rose from her stomach, and she pushed her plate away. She would not allow that to go on any longer. She needed to help her fellow Faunus. She'd free him from the chains of slavery, and he'd reward her with a nice, hot, _hard_-

Wait, she was getting off-topic there.

She cleared her throat and looked straight at Jaune. "You're not an animal," she stated firmly, leaving no room for argument.

"Technically I partially am," he replied placidly. "When I'm a wolf, I'm an animal, which means that sometimes I _am_ an animal."

"No, that's just your Semblance." Surprisingly, it was Weiss of all people who was backing her up. "A Semblance does not change who or what you are."

Jaune halted for a second. "It… doesn't?"

Blake felt pity for the poor boy. Was he so broken he couldn't even _imagine_ what it meant to not feel like an animal just because of a Semblance and some people telling him horrible things?

"Of course it can – _we_ choose what we are. We're not _born_ something, we _choose_," Yang countered swiftly. "It's your decisions whether you want to be changed by your Semblance or not."

"And you're a person, Jaune," Ruby added too, as if to fix it, and Blake knew why. They didn't want open-minded people, like her, to realize how they'd been treating that poor boy.

Well, their evil plot had been revealed, and let it never be said Blake Belladonna run when a problem raised it's ugly head! She would _never_ run from a problem! She would save Jaune and then he would ram her hard with-

No! No! Good Blake, but not the time!

Too many adult literature books late at night… and all thorough the day, but that was beside the point.

She abruptly stood from her seat. "Well, lunch break isn't over yet, and I-"

"Ow! That hurts!"

As one, every head snapped in the direction of the cry of pain, and Blake sank in her seat once again. There they were, four perfect examples of humanity's vileness and evilness. Four human boys who were harassing a Faunus girl, pulling her rabbit ears and making her cry. And who knew, maybe she was on shaky legs because the four of them had cornered her earlier and-

Gah! She loved her books but they were a bit too often on her mind!

Across from her, Yang's fists tightened. Ha! The girl must've been itching to go and help those boys, but she was restraining herself so her racism wouldn't be revealed. But Blake Belladonna saw through every lie, every veil, everything! Unfortunately not clothes though.

"It's hard to be a Faunus," the blonde stated with a strained voice.

"You have no idea," the black-haired girl muttered darkly, too low for anyone to hear.

"She's got it coming," shrugged Jaune. Yang and Ruby sighed as everyone's heads snapped to him once again. "I mean, she's a Huntress in training. If she doesn't want to fight, she shouldn't even be here."

"She's alone against four people," Blake retorted angrily. Was that what those two she-devils had taught him? That harassing Faunus was okay as long as they didn't fight back, and when they did to call the authorities?

"She's got a team too, everyone here has one. Or she could tell the professors, or she could ask for help." Jaune stuffed another nugget into his mouth. "I mean, it's not like she can't talk right now. If she's not fighting, nor calling for help, nor with her team, just begging for them to stop, then she shouldn't be here at all. We're gonna learn how to fight people too, not just Grimm. If she can't stand up for herself in a school like this, she's never gonna stand up for herself, and thus teaching her how to fight is a waste of time if she's never gonna use that knowledge."

Blake growled at him. "Is that what you think? Then by all means, leave people to die because they can't fight!"

Jaune held up a finger. "Can't fight and won't fight are different. Also, people who can't fight usually ask for help. But she _does_ have the skill to fight back, she just chooses not to do anything. She leaves herself to her enemy's mercy and hope for the best." He pointed to the girl who, released by the boy, walked away with tears in her eyes. "What I see is a sheep in a school of lions. If she leaves her fate in others' hands, she'll be eaten. End of the story. Because if _here_ she'll get her ears pulled, _out there_ she'll be killed."

"So it's fine to let her suffer even though you could've done something?!" Blake snarled back, fed up with his closed-minded mentality.

"Yes. She could've done a number of things to stop them, and she did none. If she needs help _here_, in a school full of professors who are ready to help her, in a school where we are _supposed _to fight, she won't last a day in the real world. The strong lives, the weak dies, that's Nature's Law." He ate another nugget before continuing. "And I'm not talking about mere combat skills. You're smart? You survive. You're strong? You survive. You're fast? You survive. You're technologically advanced? You survive. You have good connections and slash or resources? You survive. You are stupid, weak, slow, or alone? You die. It's very simple. We are all strong. She's weak. She needs protection. If she does… she shouldn't play the Huntress."

"That's it!" Blake stood up and slammed her hands against the table. "How can you say that?! You would leave a fellow Faunus to be oppressed because of her heritage just because she wasn't strong enough to fight off four people at once?! How close-minded are you?!"

"Hey, that's my brother you're talking about!" Yang shot up as well, eyes turning red as her anger subtly activated her Semblance.

"Well why didn't _any_ of you do something?" Jaune retorted mercilessly. "I told you my reasons not to help – what about you?"

Everyone averted their eyes except for Weiss. "Because infighting is against the rules, obviously. We'll let the professors sort this out."

"So rules are more important than a person's happiness?!" Blake snapped at her too before growling and grabbing Jaune's arm. "Come with me! We have to talk!"

A much stronger hand clamped down on her own forearm, making her wince. "Whatever you want to tell him, you can tell me too," Yang threatened her with more than an edge in her voice. No, that was an entire sword's worth of edge.

Of course, they didn't want her to break the brainwashing. If he were to be left alone with her, a lot could happen. She could convince him to admit just how horrible they were treating him, and together they would face his oppressors, and then he would make love to her against the library's shelves. Or she could restore his Faunus-ness and he'd admit he's not an animal nor he will ever be, and to thank her he would make love to her right there on the floor. Or she could push him to tell the Professors about it and they would fight for Faunus equality together, and make love in their shared tent when camping out in the wilds.

Whichever the case, the endings promised to be really good.

"I'd much rather talk with him alone," she spat back, venomously. "_I_ have done nothing wrong to deserve such suspiciousness."

"Your whole personality is suspicious," Weiss unhelpfully pointed out, making her realize she was causing a scene in front of everyone.

She relented, if anything to avoid attracting attention to himself. "Fine! Have it your way. I'm going to fix his mentality no matter what you think."

She shook off Yang's hand and stormed off, not missing Yang's comment on how that was an impossible task and how they had tried already. She didn't believe her of course. They were all liars.

/-/

Jaune Arc didn't mind fighting. He loved killing Beowolves and Gorehorns, but fighting itself wasn't half bad. He wasn't an adrenaline junkie like Yang was, nor did he find fighting fun like Ruby, but a bit of both. Only a bit.

Being called down on the stage to fight Cardin Winchester didn't seem fun, nor interesting.

He stood up and jogged down the stairs. The buff guy did the same from his spot a few rows behind him, and they quickly retrieved their weapons from their lockers. That boy, Winchester, took a mace way too big to be used one-handed, so either he was far stronger than he looked, or it was a two-handed mace. The small leather-strapped area told him it was probably the former. Which was actually pretty great, since he had experience fighting strong people like Yang.

"Fighters ready?" Both boys nodded as Goodwitch's voice rang out from where she stood in the shadows. "Begin!"

"Get ready to lose, animal!" The big guy charged immediately, mace raised to strike downwards, and Jaune easily rolled to the side, hitting with a light and quick slash at his ankles. The attack didn't seem to faze him, as he continued the swing to try and hit his back. Once again, the young wolf avoided the blow before counterattacking. "Stay still, stupid animal!"

_'Why would I want to stay still?'_ Jaune wondered, surprised. He had thought that the whole point of the class was to improve themselves by facing challenges. If he were to stay still, neither he nor his opponent would learn anything. Everyone could hit a so-called sitting duck. "Uh… no thanks, I'll stick to dodging," he replied nevertheless. Summer had taught him that ignoring people was just rude.

"I wasn't asking you!" In his rage, the larger boy slammed the mace down, breaking the concrete in an impressive show of strength… and also leaving himself wide open for the roundhouse kick followed by a double spinning sickle slash. Jaune gracefully finished the spin and returned in a relaxed guard position. This would apparently be easier than he'd thought it'd be, honestly.

But still, if he wasn't asking him, who was he asking? Ms Goodwitch? He supposed that might've been the case, but if so, why hadn't Ms Goodwitch replied?

Taking the offensive, Jaune charged at his opponent and rolled under the mace swing he expected. He was about to launch a second sickle spin when he heard Ruby cry out at him.

"Look out!"

Jaune did indeed look out and peeked over his shoulder – which turned out to be a mistake. Faster than he'd thought him capable, Cardin had reverted the swing and slammed the mace into his face with both hands. He whimpered in pain as he was sent flying from the force of the swing, losing both sickles on the way there. For the first time in a while, he landed hard on his back.

"There, right where you belong, animal," sneered Cardin, approaching boastfully with his mace slung over his shoulder and a smirk on his face.

But Jaune had fought Drunkle Qrow way too many times to be fooled by tricks. Cardin was trash-talking and being boastful to trick him. True, he probably wasn't much better out of a fight, but still it should've been weird for him to be so slow. With such a weapon and no shield, he had to somehow make up for his lack of defence. And Jaune had fallen right into his -admittedly well set- trap.

The boy got to his feet and laughed, surprising his opponent. "Wolf, you are so gonna go on my list of favourite opponents here," he stated with a smile. Yang and Ruby were already there, one for strength and the other for speed, but this guy was tricky. He liked that. Kept him on his toes. "Can't wait to see what else you can pull."

His cheerfulness seemed to take Cardin back, making him falter for a second. "What the- What?"

Jaune shrugged and rolled his shoulders before taking an unarmed fighting stance, pouring Aura into his -admittedly short- claws and grinning. "You're an interesting opponent. You played me just right! Never took you as the tricky type, but I guess that's good for you, isn't it?"

Cardin scowled at him before charging again – and this time, it was no wild swing. The mace raced down with precision and as soon as the Faunus ducked to dodge it, Cardin was ready with a front kick, hitting him in the face again and making him stumble.

The wolf rolled away from the second swing and got to his feet again. He wouldn't be able to go on much longer. His Aura was already in the yellow, though not by much. He had seventy percent left, more or less. Still, thirty percent from a kick and a swing were a lot. Cardin was _way_ stronger than he had anticipated. Apparently those muscles weren't just for show.

Such raw strength probably meant that tackling or brawling him wouldn't work too well, just like with Yang, he reasoned as he rolled forward to avoid another attack from the boy, keeping his distance. Some martial arts could help him, but he wasn't a completely unarmed fighter and if that kick was anything to go by, Cardin wasn't a newbie at unarmed fighting either.

_'Let's try this,'_ he mumbled to himself as he raced under a swing of the mace. As soon as Cardin tried to sweep low with a kick, he intercepted the hit with an Aura-infused hand, forearm meeting shin with force. Taking advantage of the temporary contact, Jaune activated his Semblance.

Too late. Knowingly or not, Cardin stepped away to put some space between the two, and his Semblance didn't catch him right. A bright flash of light overtook the arena before dying down, making everyone gasp as they got their first good look at the giant wolf that had appeared first in the courtyard before Initiation and then in the locker room the day of Initiation.

Larger than a horse, with dark grey fur that looked as irked and harsh as quills, and semi-glowing blue eyes, the gigantic wolf looked every bit as intimidating as they'd first seen it. Cardin himself was taken aback by both his size and the transformation itself, and that was probably his fatal mistake.

Jaune bounded over to him in one single leap, grabbing the mace from his surprised hands and yanking it away before spitting it out of the ring. Then he tried to swat Cardin down with a paw, but the boy seemed to have recovered from the shock. Rolling away, he landed just beside Jaune's own weapons, and barely hesitated for a split second before picking them up to defend himself. Apparently, he didn't consider himself _that_ good of an unarmed fighter.

However, Lunar Crescents were meant for speed, not strength, and Cardin was going to be seriously hindered by his armour. He showed good reflexes when he managed to cross his sickles in time to stop his teeth from finding a new home in Cardin's neck. However, that meant his sides were free to be clawed thoroughly before he could step back – and to do that, he had to abandon the sickles in the wolf's jaws as no amount of tugging would free them in time.

With a bright flash of light, Jaune Rose was back to standing in the arena, fully clothed to some people's surprise, who dropped his sickles into his hands and grinned at Cardin. Their Auras were sixty-three to fifty-two, respectively, which meant he already had the upper hand and his weapons back.

With new resolve, Jaune performed a third sickle spin, though he wasn't surprised when Cardin kicked low and swept his feet out from under him. Falling onto his left hand, he delivered two Capoeira to his face before pushing himself off the ground and coming back down with the intent to invert Cardin's left kneecap. Fortunately for the burnt-haired boy, he managed to dodge to the right, but by then Jaune had had more than enough time to use his sickles.

His right Lunar Crescent hooked around Cardin's right arm and pulled, forcing him to spin around, before the left sickle hooked his waist and pulled him toward the boy, who grinned despite the elbow Cardin managed to throw into his gut. Wrapping his arms around the Winchester's midsection, he bent back and suplexed him into the floor, head-first. By then, his opponent's Aura was near the red, barely hanging over twenty. Rolling over to sit on Cardin's stomach, he grinned and punched the other teen square in the face, thrice, before the end-of-match bell rang, letting everyone know the match was over.

Jaune stood up and dusted himself off before offering a hand to the still downed Cardin, who scowled up at him before taking his wrist in his grip and pulling himself up.

"That was a really good fight, I hope you won't mind sparring again out of class sometimes," Jaune offered cheerfully, somehow not minding the crushingly tight 'handshake' Cardin was giving him. Years of living with Yang had desensitized him to such force.

The larger teen snorted and let go of his hand. "I won't be as surprised next time."

"I hope you won't!" laughed the wolf, sheathing his weapons once again. "But seriously, that was a good fight!"

Cardin huffed and walked to retrieve his mace before placing it back on his waist and glancing at him from the corner of his eyes. "Not good enough, evidently, against someone like _you_ no less…"

"Someone like me?" Jaune repeated, confused.

"A _Faunus_," Cardin spat venomously, as if the word burned his tongue just by speaking it. "A dirty animal who should be grovelling in the dust at my feet."

"Oi, I'm sweaty, not dirty, and so are you!" Jaune defended himself, offended. "And two animals don't really like Dust, it tends to explode."

Cardin stared at him as if he was crazy. "What the-?!"

"But anyway, why would being a Faunus mess with my fighting skills?"

The larger teen's eye twitched. "Oh, for the love of- Just forget it! Good fight, okay?!" The boy grumbled some more about stupid animals and how idiotic they could be before stomping off and back into his seat, freeing the arena for more sparring matches.

Jaune stared after him. "That was really weird…"

**_Poor poor Blake. She's into the madness as well. How will this end? Ruby thinks Pyrrha wants to kill Jaune. Jaune thinks Pyrrha is bullying Ruby. Blake thinks Yang and Ruby brainwashed Jaune. Pyrrha thinks Ruby and Jaune hate her. Cardin is freaked out by Pyrrha. Jaune cannot understand why Cardin is exasperated with him._**

**_Seriously, who can understand what's going on any more? And it's only the sixth chapter!_**

**_Also, yes, in this story Cardin has some serious fighting skills and isn't just some stupid cannon fodder who can only be the stereotypical moronic meanie-weenie antagonist. This will of course mean that the Ursa Major in Forever Fall isn't gonna scare him or anything. _**

**_As you can see, Jaune has more wolfish instincts than you'd thought. He doesn't see Velvet as a prey since they are in a school for predators, so he sees no reason to help her. Whatever happens is fully her fault and her mess to deal with. He's all for helping people who ask or truly need it, much less for helping people he thinks just are too stupid to ask for help._**

**_Much harsher mentality, much more wolf-like._**

**_Blake is a pervert and also really really stupid. I mean, she trusted Sun, who was just one guy who had winked at her when they had first met, is a stowaway (which IS actually a crime so yes, Weiss was right in calling him a criminal), and is somehow in Beacon - Blake didn't know he was a Hunter until they actually talked. But opening up to him is right because he's a Faunus, while the people who showed pity for Velvet are inheritedly not going to understand. True, it was WF business, but still... Sun's description isn't very flattering!_**

**_So yeah, Blake is NOT the sharpest katana in her books._**

**_Until next time,_**

**_Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh_**


	7. Chapter 7

**_Hello everyone! After more than a month, I'm back! Honestly, it's harder to write comedy than adventure or action. Looking for jobs doesn't help, either..._**

**_Anyway, enjoy._**

Ruby Rose was at ease, for the time being. Sure, being in the same room as Byrrha Nikos… no, wait, _Pyrrha Nikos_, wasn't her favourite way of spending her free time, but since everyone else was there as well, she saw no reason to be alarmed. If the redhead were to try something, she could be stopped by just about anyone, especially that awesome Nora girl. Weiss did not like her nor Jaune, but she'd learned the girl was far too proud to lower herself to such petty revenges… or so she said. Mostly she just didn't care.

Oh, also, there was Ren too, she assumed.

They were in Team RPBJ's dorm. It had meant to be just an evening among friends, those friends being Ruby, Jaune, Yang and Nora. However, Pyrrha and Blake were in the room as they lived there, and the other half of Team SYLN had been dragged over by Nora and Yang. Weiss had accepted only because of Pyrrha's presence, quoting her exact words.

Yang and Nora had done the rest.

Whatever Ruby could think of, they had it. Snacks? Four bowls of popcorns and chips, several very unhealthy chocolate bars, three 2l bottles of lemonade and orange drink. Mattresses and pillows on the floor? They'd brought theirs from their own dorms. Curfew? They'd checked, Beacon had absolutely no curfew during the weekdays and even less so during the weekends, and it was a Saturday night. Stereo just in case? While they didn't have an actual stereo, Yang had way too many music Apps on her Scroll to care and she'd volunteered to use it as a stereo in case they needed one. People? Brought over easily enough, they'd even convinced the others to join in. Awkwardness? Not on her sister's watch, she was the queen of popular kids' reunions and she wasn't afraid to show it. Pyjamas? They all had theirs, though for some reason Blake was glaring at their own nightwear. So what if the three of them, as siblings, had matching wolf-themed pyjamas? It wasn't a crime!

Yang had even thought of some 'cool' activities to play.

Ruby disagreed on her definition of 'cool'. About some of them, Jaune too wasn't exactly thrilled.

_Spin the Bottle_ had been fun. Embarrassing, humiliating and sometimes awkward thanks to Yang, but so had been _Truth or Dare_. Those kinds of games were meant to be embarrassing or just plain-out stupid. Had Ruby asked Ren to do her homework for a week, no one would've laughed. At least not as much as her asking him to try and lick his nose only to be shocked once he displayed incredible tongue flexibility and succeed.

_Sikori_ had been fun, even though a little nerve-wrecking. The game itself was simple enough. The world was divided into a hundred-three 'zones'. At the beginning, each player drew a City card to find out where he could start his empire. All the zones without player Hunters in it had Grimm tokens, which had to be destroyed before the zones could be conquered. In the same way enemy Hunters had to be killed before conquering their land. Who could conquer at least fifty-two zones won the game. Ruby's first memory of that game was of Jaune being confused as to why Hunters could so easily be placed in water, as some zones covered only seas and oceans, with no land.

They had played four times. Yang won the first, Weiss the second and the fourth, and Ren won the third. Ruby, Jaune, Nora and Blake were usually erased from existence during the first eight rounds. Ruby and Jaune, having played it enough times before, were eliminated because they were threats to the others. Nora was just plain unlucky with the dice, and Blake didn't care enough to seriously bother.

Pyrrha lasted slightly longer only because she was none of the above.

After _Sikori_ they had played a bit of Mortal Battle, where Yang had annihilated everyone else. That had been the game Jaune had liked least. He had never been one for videogames, which probably had something to do with his wilder nature.

Now, anyone who had ever taken part in a group bonding night knew what came after that. Unfortunately for Ruby, she was not among those people. As such, she was ill-prepared for what Yang had in store as last activity of the night.

"A game of twenty questions?" Jaune repeated, confused. "Where's the fun in that?"

"It's not just for fun, it's also to get to know each other," Yang replied cheerfully, despite seeing most of the participants groan at her suggestion. Beside her, only Nora seemed eager to start, and Pyrrha looked… okay enough, she guessed. Sometimes it was hard to tell, with that permanent smile she always sported. "Come on, it's not like you have all terrible, dark pasts you cannot tell anyone about!"

Ruby had definitely noticed how Blake had flinched when Yang mentioned terrible pasts. What secrets did she hide?

Ugh! She didn't have time to find that out, she was far too busy keeping an eye on Pyrrha!

"Come on~!" cooed Nora. "It doesn't have to be personal secrets. I mean, we could just ask each other about our dreams or our hobbies!"

"Huh, this is the first intelligent thing she's said since I met her," Weiss commented, her mockery going unnoticed by the girl.

"Nora is right," Ren immediately spoke up to support his 'childhood friend'. "Anyone who doesn't feel like answering can just ask to change the question."

"And besides, it's past one in the morning," added the white heiress of the group. "Just talking will surely be quieter than playing games, and we shouldn't disturb the other students' rest any longer."

To Ruby, they were totally missing the point.

It wasn't about sleeping or not, or going to bed later. It was about talking. _Talking!_ She was horrible at social interactions, and so was Jaune – he just didn't know that. Why would people who wanted to have fun start to _talk_? Talking wasn't fun – well, she liked talking with her siblings and with Nora, Ren was okay too she guessed, but talking as a way to make friends? That sounded insane.

"To make things better, whenever it's possible everyone has to answer. Like, their favourites hobbies and whatnot. So, Ruby starts because she's the youngest," Yang proclaimed, rubbing her hands together as if scheming evilly – which wasn't far from the truth in Ruby's humble opinion. "So, Rubes, anything you wanna ask any of us?"

Ruby tried, she tried really hard, but in the end her mind came up completely blank. What did she have to ask those people? Unless she were to ask Jaune or Yang how their day had been, she couldn't see a way out of the conversation. Why did Yang torture her so? Why did she have to be forced into… ugh… _socialization_?

In the end, she settled for a very simple question she'd been wondering for a while. "Ren, for how long have you known Nora, exactly?"

Going by Yang's expression, which hadn't fallen at her question, Ruby guessed she hadn't picked a bad choice. Maybe not one of the teasing-worthy questions Yang was so fond of, but overall not a bad one.

After a few seconds of deep thought, the young man replied, "Ten or eleven years. We were really really young when we met for the first time, and it wasn't a week before we stuck together and became inseparable."

"Yup!" added Nora, nodding enthusiastically. "We were always together after that. Though not, you know, _together-together_, because that would be weird, right? Not to say Ren's not handsome, he totally is, but we've been friends our whole lives, it'd be _sooo_ weird if-"

"Ren, it's your turn, pick someone to interrogate," Yang quickly cut in. As much as she liked Nora and as much as she loved the juicy piece of teasing-worthy news about Nora and Ren's relationship, letting Nora go on a tirade about why she and Ren weren't 'together-together' as she put it would not end well. She'd done that once, and deeply regretted it. Seriously, both of them were so deep in denial she couldn't even find it in herself to tease them.

The green-pyjamaed ninja thought about it, but eventually shrugged. "Blake, why do you wear that bow over your ears?"

Blake frowned. "My bow doesn't cover my ears."

"Not your human ears," Ren specified.

/-/

Blake's eyes went wide. The boy had so nonchalantly outed her entire secret, like it did not matter one bit! She stiffened as the others eyed her bow with interest, before… She closed her eyes. She couldn't bear to watch as their faces contorted into ones of disgust and hatred as evil and violent thoughts swirled around in their heads and-

"Are you gonna answer the question or not?" Weiss snapped. Of course she would be the first one to rain down insults on her, she was a Schnee, after all, but an insult so sharp? What had she done to-Wait a second… that wasn't an insult!

She dared to peek her eyes open to find everyone staring at her in curiosity and confusion. Relief swept through her like a tidal wave. They weren't gonna attack her. Good. She didn't think she could manage to escape a room with seven other people in it so easily.

"You… you don't hate me?" she almost panted, looking expectantly at them, as if they were about to jump on her and tear away at her flesh – and hopefully clothes and _argh not now Blake!_

"Why should we hate you?" asked Nora, tilting her head to the side.

"Yeah, all of us are okay with Jaune, why wouldn't we be with you?" Pyrrha added as well.

Realization struck Blake like a ton of shit splattering all over her. Hard, and more than a little humiliating. Of course, how could she _not_ have noticed?! Jaune was even more animal-like than she was, if they hadn't said a word about his animal traits, why would they say anything about hers?

Though… the bow was there to hide her identity so people wouldn't recognize her as a former White Fang member… so it wasn't like they knew the whole story and accepted her nonetheless.

Still, it was quite the relief.

"Oh, I just don't like people staring at my ears," she lied smoothly, like she was so very used to… even though that was not such a good thing. "And well… they do attract a bit of attention."

"Wait a second, if you're a Faunus, why did you deny that the first time we met?!" exclaimed Jaune, recalling the meeting.

Blake blushed and huffed in a very Weiss-like manner. "I'd just been chased around by a giant wolf, I wasn't gonna risk repeating the experience!"

"Fortunately…" the white-haired heiress of the group muttered, forcing Yang and Ruby to stifle their chuckles.

Jaune had the decency of looking ashamed. "Oh, y-yeah… sorry 'bout that…"

She sighed, but let it go. If her theory was correct and he'd been brainwashed into thinking himself an actual animal, it wasn't his fault, but his capturers'. "It's fine, you didn't know." Since it was now her turn, she looked at Jaune with narrowed eyes. "Jaune, could you tell us how your Semblance works, exactly?"

Ruby and Yang exchanged glances, but otherwise didn't comment. They just didn't want her to find out the horrible things they had done to the boy, did they?! Well, she'd show them that Blake Belladonna wasn't someone to be trifled with.

Jaune, on the other hand, didn't look surprised in the slightest, and Blake could understand why. While a transformation-based Semblance was far from unique, it was still uncommon. Most people didn't change their genetic composition when they used their Semblance. He was probably used to explaining his Semblance…

"Well, this is the first time someone asked me about it, so bear with me."

…or maybe not.

The boy thought about it for a second before smiling. "My Semblance is like a switch. It only drains my Aura when I 'switch' it. Which means I can maintain my human or wolf form as long as I want," he began slowly, then gaining confidence. Blake nodded, she understood so far. "I can also turn other people into wolves if I'm touching them, which is what I tried to do with Cardin. I never tried to do the opposite, turning another wolf human, mainly because with all the Grimm around it's really really hard to find any wild animal, wolves even less. I know it doesn't work on dogs though. Zwei never changed."

"Zwei?" asked Weiss, raising an eyebrow. "What kind of a name for a dog is it?"

Ruby shrugged. So it had been her to give the dog that name. Since when the girl knew dead languages?

"Okay, now it's my turn!" Jaune exclaimed cheerfully. He seemed to be enjoying the evening so far… Blake wished she could say the same. "Nora… what's the biggest Grimm you've ever killed?"

She expected the hyperactive ginger to grin and shout and yell. What she didn't expect was for her to seriously think about the question. Was Grimm killing that much of a serious topic for her? They were Hunters, the Defenders of Humanity… she should've been more concerned about reaching Faunus equality than fighting mere small fries like the Grimm that besieged humanity.

She should've been more like her!

"Biggest as in literally biggest, a particularly big Ursa Major," she recounted after a moment, her voice light and cheerful but not as crazed as usual. "Strongest, a Geist Ren and I encountered in Anima."

"Oh, yes, I've read those kind of Grimm are native of that continent," Weiss nodded, like a teacher agreeing with their pupil. "Though I am surprised you two survived the encounter. They are said to be hard to defeat."

Nora shrugged. "Well, usually maybe yes, but that one didn't have much stuff to possess."

"Not after Nora destroyed everything," Ren added in a stage-whisper, making her blush and everyone else crack a smile or a laugh.

Who knew he had a humorous side?

"Weiss!" And just like that, Weiss's smile turned into a grimace. Not that Blake could blame her, Nora was probably going to ask some asinine question about dreams or whatever. "What's the most normal dream you've ever had?"

Yeah, like that one.

"My most… _normal_ dream?" Weiss repeated, taken a little by surprise. "You mean my _weirdest_ dream, right?"

"Why would I mean weirdest?" giggled the hyperactive short gingerhead. "All dreams are weird, so if the more normal they are, the rarer they are, which means very normal dreams are unique!"

Confused by the girl's inverted logic, Weiss looked a little bit lost – not that Blake could blame her, all in all. "Well… I once dreamed about taking a walk in the gardens… is that normal enough?"

Nora 'meh'd with her hands but accepted the dream. "Yeah, I guess. It's your turn, Weiss."

"Ugh," she groaned and rolled her eyes at Yang when the blond nudged her with a grin and whispered something in her ear. "Seriously, Yang? Is that all you can think about?"

"No it's not, it was just a trick to make you ask me a question and now it's _my_ turn," she grinned broadly. For once, Weiss didn't complain as at least she'd been free from the need to come up with another question for that stupid game of 'bonding' they were doing.

Blake sighed. It was gonna be a _long_ night.

Seeing as Pyrrha was the only one to have yet to be brought into the game – and she was also her idol, Yang decided to turn her question to her. "Pyrrha! This is a complicated question so Yang on until I'm done." The pun earned groans from basically everyone. "What's the weirdest weapon-Semblance combo you've ever encountered and fought?"

"What kind of a question is that?" Weiss asked none too softly.

"It's my questions, so shut up, Ice Queen," Yang snapped back without missing a beat, still focused on Pyrrha.

The tournament champion didn't need a lot of time to think. "Maya Brass, during my fourth Mistral Regional Tournament – the first I won. Her Semblance created rainbow-coloured bubbles from nowhere, and her weapon was a baseball bat she used to throw them. They exploded on contact with solid objects," she recounted, recalling the close calls she had during that fight. That had also been the first fight she had used her Semblance as priority over her weapons, and the one in which she learned that to win, she needed to use her Semblance far more often as she was going against people who had more years of training than she had at the time.

When all eyes turned to her, she paled as she realized that it was now her turn to ask a question… and her mind was drawing a blank, complete with beeping noises.

/-/

Ozpin smiled as his faithful member of the Inner Circle, Qrow Branwen, finally managed to tell the chair from the table in his drunken stupor and face-planted into it.

Nothing had changed, then.

The old wizard patiently waited for the man to overcome his drunkenness, enough to speak and think properly, at least. In all the years he'd known him, he'd never failed to be impressed by the man's resistance to alcohol. As well as his resistance to women's rejection. Qrow was a master at both.

However, there was a reason he had called him for a meeting. One regarding the third Rose Xiao Long child – or rather, the boy himself was the reason.

Waiting for Qrow to get his bearings together was a tedious but necessary pain he had to endure in order to get his answers. And oh man, he surely wanted his answers. There was little he wanted more than his answers at the moment – hot cocoa being one of such few things, but after all, who didn't love hot cocoa?

Well, those who were allergic to it, he supposed, but he wasn't.

Qrow seemed to take less time than usual to get his head out of the dark, dingy pub he'd left it in alongside his money. A few minutes later, he was even able to speak semi-coherently. "Whaddya wan'?"

Ah. Finally. A question. Ozpin _loved_ to be asked questions. He loved being able to answer vaguely and enigmatically, acting like the incredibly old wizard he was. Or, how Qrow usually called it, like the stupidly old bugger all his friends viewed him as.

"What matters is not what I want or need or wish, but what I _should've_ already known," he replied mysteriously, intertwining his fingers in front of him and leaning his elbows on the table. He loved messing with people like that, and that position really added to the whole 'enigmatic wise wizard' act.

"Uhh…"

"It has come to my attention, Qrow, that you've withheld important information you were in possession of and that I should've been informed of," he continued, undeterred by the man's confusion, despite the fact he was consciously causing said confusion for his own personal amusement. "So, Qrow, are you going to share, or not?"

The Hunter didn't hold a second under the pressure. Which was odd, as he had grown used to Ozpin's quirks a long time prior. With a suffering sigh, he took out his Scroll, tapped on it a few times, and slid it over to Ozpin, refusing to even look in the man's direction.

Satisfied, Ozpin took the device and glanced at it.

Delicious, shower-steaming, curvaceous flesh greeted his eyes with a most welcoming sight, water running down and down and down where a cluster of well-trimmed hairs led the gaze even further down where- He hurriedly swiped the screen to the side. Legs so long they should be illegal, the skin leading the eye up, up to where they connected under that very same patch of hairs that hid pink and red flesh the eye feasted upon- Ozpin swiped again. Emerald eyes were heavy-lidded as pink, inviting lips curved into a moan while both hands busied themselves, attending to primal needs-

Red-faced, Ozpin shut the device closed and looked up at his colleague, shocked out of his mind. What was he doing with _those_ pictures on his Scroll? He shouldn't even had had them! Ozpin's brain had basically shut down by then. He forced himself to speak.

"Qrow."

The man didn't even try to hide his shame, not responding or even just raising his gaze to look at him.

"Qrow. Why do you have pictures of Glynda naked?"

He coughed awkwardly, still pointedly avoiding his eyes. "Do I really need to answer that question?"

Ozpin made up his mind. No, he really didn't want to know what his friend was doing with pictures of his other friend in the shower, undressed and even while she… _had fun by herself_. He had an idea of what the reason and the method had been, but he didn't want any confirmation. For his sanity, if anything.

He sighed and rubbed his temples. He was too tired for such things. Had it been anyone else, he would've just scolded Qrow and let it go, but Glynda? That was another matter altogether. Qrow had definitely overstepped a line, and he had to be punished for that.

"Qrow," he said his name for the fifth time in a few minutes. The Hunter steadfastly refused to acknowledge his words. "What did I tell you about taking pictures of Glynda, _especially_ in predicaments such as these? What was the rule, the _one_ rule I imposed you?"

Even through his shame, his Hunter training finally kicked in and he took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. It wasn't the end of the world. He had broken his rule, the _only_ rule, and he'd broken it so blatantly it wasn't even funny. And as sure as Salem he would need to suffer the consequences of his actions – which he knew wouldn't be nice, _at all_. Despite all that, though, he was still a Hunter, and if he could handle high-ranking Grimm, he could handle breaking a rule.

He dared to glance up and meet Ozpin's eyes.

Immediately he regretted it, ducked his head back down, and whimpered.

Never he'd seen the Headmaster so angry, so very out of his mind in rage. His usually calm and placid brown eyes were now harder than mountains and flashed with dangerous lightning. Qrow was a great fighter, but one of the skills a great fighter needed was to know when a fight is a lost battle. He knew that he had absolutely no chance of directly confronting Ozpin, verbally or not, at the moment. All he could do was whimper, look away, and pray for his life.

"Qrow, we had an agreement!" Ozpin thundered, raising from his seat in all his terrible glory.

"I- I'm sorry, it's just…" he stumbled over his words, knowing fully well that he had no excuse, and that no excuse would've placated him anyway. "Ugh, I know but… I- I couldn't- I mean, how could I resist such temptation and…"

"Silence!" roared the Headmaster, effectively stunning him into obedient silence. "I thought I could trust you. Evidently, I was wrong."

A shard of ice stabbed Qrow's heart, quick to bring cold dread spreading thorough his body. "O- Ozpin…"

"I will let this slide, _this one time_. If this were to happen ever again, I'll be forced to take action. To take _severe_ action," Ozpin boomed again, looking and sounding every bit as intimidating as the millennia-old wizard he was. "Understood?"

He mumbled in agreement, too scared to make any kind of coherent sound.

"Good." Calming down like a raging storm fading from the sky, the Headmaster returned to his seat and relaxed onto it before going back to stare at Qrow. He still needed to get answers, but the most important topic to address was out of the way. "So, returning to our previous topic. What are you not telling me?"

"O- Ozpin, I…"

He took pity. The man was still clearly shaken into sobriety by his earlier outburst – not that he could blame him, but what he'd done was _very_ wrong. "Jaune Rose Xiao Long."

Qrow blinked once, then again. "Uhh…"

Ozpin joined his fingers in front of his chest. "I know nothing of the boy, Qrow, aside from what little I could gather during his time here in Beacon. Would you care to explain why?"

The Hunter suddenly looked enlightened, and then his expression darkened and he made a grimace. "Oh. _That_. Sum made me swear not to tell you about him unless his life was in danger and depended on it."

"And you swore?" The disbelief was thick in his voice. He knew it, and he hated it. He was supposed to appear all vague and mysterious and enigmatic, damn it! Not some idiot who was surprised to hear that one of his friends had willingly kept her son's existence hidden from him.

"Sum's scary when she wants to," grumbled Qrow, shrugging slightly. Ozpin conceded him that point. Summer Rose was a great mother, she baked like a pro, and kicked ass even better. Of course she could strong-arm Qrow into swearing himself to silence. "Anyway, she would've done the same for Yang and Ruby, but you were present during both the parties for their births… If I recall correctly, you even tried to be Yang's godfather, right? Until…"

"Until I had to be actually handed Ms Xiao Long. She decided she did not like me and started screaming and flailing until she felt sick and vomited all over my suit," Ozpin completed in a deadpan. Yeah, that particular day had definitely cemented his belief that all little kids hated him. And why, at Ms Rose's own birth party, he had politely but firmly turned down the offer to be her godfather. "However, this does not answer the question. Why did you keep him a secret from me? He does not appear to be anything special – despite being skilled in combat."

Qrow sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Summer was afraid you'd recruit him in the war against Salem, since you already have plans for Ruby due to her silver eyes. She made me swear never to tell you unless you found out by yourself."

"Mmhmh," mumbled the Headmaster, only partially listening. He was aware of how little popular some of his choices were to Summer Rose, especially regarding how he trained the future warriors in the battle against Salem. However, he couldn't help but feel slightly insulted as well. In the end, he always gave them a choice. He informed them that the world might very well fall without them, and let them choose for themselves. And while it was true he groomed his future chosen warriors ever since they were little and thorough their stay in Beacon, he usually waited for them to become adults before making them choose. "Then why did she send him to Beacon?"

Qrow shrugged. "Ruby and Yang wanted to go to Beacon, and Sum didn't have the heart to separate them." It was only a half truth. Now that Jaune had mastered his Semblance and knew he had to lie about it, Ozpin had little to no reason to specifically recruit the boy, just like Yang. He didn't have silver eyes like Ruby, so he would be hopefully fine – and besides, Summer knew Ozpin had connections to the other four Academies as well, so she just chose the best and prayed. "So, what are your plans for the kid? He's good but he's not _that_ good."

Ozpin contemplated the question for a few seconds. Qrow definitely had a point. Unlike Ruby, he didn't have any special power they needed, and unlike Pyrrha, he wasn't _that_ good of a Hunter already. Having a former terrorist in the school would be interesting as well, because she knew their enemies better than they did. Of the entire team, Jaune was the odd one out, ironically, because he was normal. Just another excellent student.

He frowned. Still, not all hope was lost. His Semblance was still interesting. Despite the fact that it made _him_ incredibly recognizable, it could be used on others to turn them into normal-sized wolves. And wolves usually got less attentions that brightly-dressed, loud Hunters, if they used stealth, that is. Wolves were also better for running long distances in the wilderness, and attracted less Grimm.

He hummed thoughtfully. While still not as useful as the other three members of their team, Jaune could still be useful. Not only that, but most people did not know how to fight as wolves, which meant that he would give his teammates an incredible advantage if he managed to transform his opponents into wolves alongside him – especially given how big he was as a wolf.

In the end, it could still be useful. Not only that, but the presence of another Faunus in her team might have a positive effect on Blake, who was obviously going to be intimidated by being surrounded by humans, and more than a little out of her depth, like a fish out of the water, since she'd grown up with Faunus her whole life.

There would be much to think about and discuss with Qrow in the future. He would need to adjust his -admittedly inexistent at the moment- plans and find a way to fit the young man in them without disrupting the others' roles.

"No plans… for the time being. You're dismissed."

He could do it. He was sure of it. With lots of hot cocoa and naps and delegating to Glynda, he could do it.

Speaking of Glynda…

"Oh, and Qrow?" The man turned around just before he entered the elevator. "And the next time you try to hide pictures of Glynda from me, the consequences won't be pretty…"

He gulped and nodded before making a hasty retreat.

Ozpin sighed. Qrow was a good Hunter, but he really needed to get out of his vices, alcohol and women.

Not that he could blame him though… Glynda _was_ absurdly attractive.

His eyes went back to the Scroll Qrow had left on the table. He fought a hard battle against his more depraved side and won, but just barely. Living for millennia had given him quite the dark side in terms of flaws and pleasures. However, his willpower was still standing strong. For the time being.

Now, he had to dispose of that Scroll before Glynda saw it…

**_Nothing to comment on this, I just needed a small calm chapter before moving onto Forever Fall._**

**_IMPORTANT: I'll be gone the whole month of October, just so you know. I know it's very early to say this, but last times I told people I was on a vacation, I still received many PMs I would've liked to answer immediately. Point is, if you PM me while I'm away, you'll have to wait until I'm back. Same with reviews._**

**_This said, until next time,_**

**_Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh_**


	8. Red Like Rapiers

**_Hello everyone! I know, it's been three months more or less since the last Rose update! Between other stories, commissions, work, and of course the month-long trip to Italy, I didn't really have the ways to finish this until right now!_**

**_Rejoice! A Rose Too Many is still alive!_**

Jaune was overwhelmed by the beauty around him.

Crimson red leaves extended as far as the eye could see, and the ground itself was as scarlet as the foliage. The leaves, small ellipsoidal ones of various shade of red ranging from vermilion to Bordeaux for the older ones, fell to the ground in a slow, constant shower of red. Near the base of the trees, small patches of dark red grass interrupted the leaves that carpeted the land, muting the sounds of their footsteps. The tree trunks, unnaturally smooth and stone grey, stuck out of the ground at semi-regular intervals, slightly askew but never bent, until their branches disappeared in the blood-coloured canopy above their heads.

He'd been assigned the ungrateful task of carrying some empty jars, which kept him a little bit behind the others since he often had to regain his balance to avoid the jars from falling. During one such moment of lack of balance, he accidentally bumped into Cardin, who was right in front of him. After shooting him an apologetic look, Jaune's wolf ear twitched slightly as he heard Goodwitch's voice a bit further ahead.

_'Can't she wait for everybody to arrive?'_ he thought, a tad annoyed that the teacher had begun explaining when there were people lagging behind – especially since he hadn't exactly chosen to be slowed down by the jars. _'Oh, whatever. Ruby will fill me in later. Shouldn't be too complicated anyway, it's only been a week or so since we started school.'_

As opposite to what Pyrrha thought, that week hadn't gone by quickly. Beacon, despite not being as harsh as most people thought, still wasn't a game. The lessons and lectures were on advanced topics, and while the professors were always ready to stop and answer questions or explain a part students hadn't understood, they also didn't joke around with homework. More often than not, said homework was more of a test than actual homework – finding the correct information or being able to extrapolate the right concepts out of a lengthy lecture, all things they would probably need as Hunters.

Though Professor Port could be boring like no one else when he went on about himself and his stories. And Professor Oobleck could've used drinking a little less caffeine.

And why Professor Goodwitch was allowed to use a riding crop was still a mystery.

He picked up on said woman finishing her speech before Ruby called him over enthusiastically. Cardin shot him a glare as he took some of the jars for him and his team before turning around and disappeared into the forest. Jaune sighed. What was with that guy? Sure, he'd bumped into him but that'd been an accident – those jars _were not_ the most stable of things to carry.

Shaking Cardin out of his head, he walked over to his team, where everyone had already begun cutting the trees' bark to extract the sap. He put down the jars before scratching his head. "Guys… how am I supposed to cut it correctly? Professor Goodwitch didn't exactly wait for the students to catch up."

"Don't worry Jaune, I'll show you," Pyrrha reassured him, beckoning him closer. Still slightly wary of her -she scared his little sister, after all-, he neared her until they were side-to-side. "Look, you hold it here, like this, and then you push until you feel something give. When it does, you're in, and that's when you start filling the jar."

Yang almost choked as she doubled over laughing silently. Ruby didn't find the innuendo as amusing.

Jaune blinked as he took hold of the knife. "Okay…" He pressed the knife against the bark, cutting it deeply. "Like this?"

"Uh… no, too deep, you have to be more delicate," Pyrrha instructed him. "The best results you can get are moderately deep but hitting a good spot. That should be enough to fill up a jar… maybe halfway through."

"Uh… okay…" Jaune took back the knife, ignoring Yang, who was dying in the background, and cut the bark again. "Thanks."

"You're welcome Jaune, I'm glad I can help you," she replied with a smile. "You can call me whenever you need."

Yang literally had to bite the bark of one of the trees just to stop her laughter. She also bit that piece of bark so hard it splintered off the wood and remained in her mouth, much to Nora's amusement.

Ruby was inwardly seething. She was far from innocent enough not to catch innuendos, though Jaune didn't since he was so focused on the task at hand and couldn't see the words out of context. She was starting to really dislike Pyrrha's methods, not just her final goal of hurting Jaune.

She vowed she wouldn't allow Yang to tease Jaune about that later. The poor boy would die of humiliation if he were to realize how that conversation had sounded. That, and she really didn't need to be reminded on what Pyrrha was doing.

"Achoooooo!"

The sound of a loud sneeze caught her attention, and she turned around. Had Pyrrha gotten sick?! Was she allergic to Jaune's fur?! Did she need to be sent off to a remote hospital somewhere in Vacuo's wastelands for a few weeks?! Not that Ruby wished her ill of course!

Unfortunately, Pyrrha hadn't been the one the sneeze belonged to.

"You okay, Jaune?" Pyrrha asked motherly, as if worried.

Ruby mentally scoffed. As if that wicked girl would worry about the one she wanted to hurt. Why did she want to hurt him again? Ruby frowned. She really couldn't remember. Had she been hired by someone? Maybe Weiss? Yeah, that sounded more likely…

Then she realized…

_'Oh no! Now I have to watch out for Weiss too! Is there anyone in this school who doesn't have ill intentions?! Wait, Ren and Nora seemed pretty okay… but everyone else?!'_

"I'm fine, I _ph_ink…" he mumbled, sniffling a bit to try and stop himself from sneezing again. "I_ph_'s jus_th_ a _f_old, maybe?"

"I think it's some kind of allergy," Weiss imperiously informed them from a few metres away. "It's unlikely for you to get a cold so easily."

"Allergy to what?" Ruby asked confused. It surely wasn't Jaune's first time in a forest!

"Maybe it was the sap of these trees – or maybe he's allergic to your shampoo, Pyrrha!" Nora offered cheerfully.

"My shampoo has no allergens in it," Pyrrha replied, confused. "My sponsor said it would be bad if I were to use a shampoo and then accidentally set off a fan's allergy…"

"Why would a fan sniff your hair?" Blake asked, amused by the thought.

Pyrrha shuddered in disgust. "It'd really be for the best if I didn't tell you." Fans were animals, ready to do anything just to 'show their love for her'. Stalkers weren't all that uncommon either. Honestly, as much as it grossed her out, hair-sniffing was probably harmless compared to what fans could try to do.

"He's probably just allergic to the sap of these trees, come on," Yang shrugged their concerns aside. "C'me here, Jauney, let's see how bad it is."

Dutifully, the boy set down the still practically empty jar and walked over to his 'big sis', actually more like 'twin sis', actually not related by blood at all. Said big sis carefully examined him, aka glanced at him, and nodded.

"Nothing serious, just stay away from the sap and it should go away."

"How do you know it's not serious?" Blake asked without even looking up from her jar. "You barely looked at him."

"Because it's big sis instincts telling me he'll be fine," Yang waved off her concern as if 'big sis instincts' was all the reason she needed. "You'll know when you'll have a younger sibling."

"Isn't Jaune your twin?"

"Adopted, and since we can't be _sure_ of his birthday, he's automatically younger than me."

Seeing Blake about to open her mouth to retort, Ruby sighed and shook her head. "It's pointless, Blake, Yang has been saying that since forever."

"Well, what's wrong with her being the older sibling anyway?" Jaune asked, his Aura keeping his allergy down. If only it could work while actually being in contact with the sap…

"See? He's fine," Yang said smugly.

Blake shook his head at the human's remark and focused on Jaune's question. "Nothing is wrong, it's just more correct to say twins if you are of the same age."

"Actually that is not always true," Weiss cut in from a bit further ahead. "If one child is born on January, the mother gets pregnant on February and the second child is born on November, they are both born in the same year but with different ages and as such should not be called twins. Twins can only apply when the birth date is the same for both children."

"And since my birthday comes before Jaune's, I'm the eldest child," Yang completed with a grin, ignoring the fact Blake had ignored her.

Blake rolled her eyes and didn't reply. She had no siblings, but if all families were as messy as that, with two humans and a captive Faunus all of who didn't even know who was the eldest, then she didn't even want a family. Too much chaos to keep up with.

Unbeknownst to her, Lyrr- _Pyrrha_ was having much different thoughts.

/-/

Pyrrha Nikos. Champion. Great fighter. Bombshell of a woman. Not the best at making friends. More than a bit socially awkward. Kind to a fault. Nice to a fault. Pretty to a fault. Perfect combat skills. Liked to be on top… during her fights, of course.

Summed up, she could be described as everything nice mixed together with a futuristic war machine, sprinkled abundantly with social awkwardness.

Perfect blend for a lover, as long as the other party made the first move and the courtship. Horrible blend if she had to take matters into her own two hands.

She didn't exactly lack the initiative. She'd been throwing lines for friendship fishes all around, but for some reason, Ruby and Jaune disliked her, Blake didn't seem to care about anything aside from her books, Weiss just wanted to use her to her own advantage, Ren and Nora were a bipolar duo she was kind of afraid of, and Yang was a bit over-the-top, especially with how often she wanted to spar. None of them seemed just content with hanging out in Vale or having a bit of _normal_ fun at Beacon.

True, she kind of lacked the courage to just walk up to one of them and ask them to hang out, and her ways of 'trying' were more like standing near the people she wanted to hang out with, and making some nice comments from time to time, but at least she was trying!

Ruby gave her an adorable stink eye every time their eyes met, for some reason unknown to the taller redhead, and it had been going on since Initiation. Yang's hangout spots, mainly bars or discos in Vale, were a bit too much for the poor, lonely champion. Also, too crowded for her liking, someone was bound to recognize her. Blake, as mentioned before, seemed to lack interest in a lot of things, people being one of those. They studied in the library together, but almost never said a word to each other. Ren looked fine, but no one could stay around Nora for so long and remain sane – so she didn't dare approach the intro-extrovert duo. Weiss had already proven to want to be her friend only to reap the results joining their fames would bring her. That, and using her as war machine to be known in Beacon. And finally Jaune. Jaune, who hadn't known who she was until Yang had sat him down and fangirled about her fights for half an hour. Jaune, who had been so nice to her during Initiation, even he was now keeping his distance. She could guess it was because his sister obviously disliked her, but she thought she made it clear she only wanted to be friends!

Was that too much to ask?

Apparently it was, because literally no one was her friend. Sure, Nora was always friendly and Yang always… well, Yang. But it was more their personalities than actual desire to spend time with her! Why was Life so cruel to her?! What had she done to end up in a group where either you were in or you were out?!

She didn't ask for much, just a couple of friends to hang out with and feel comfortable with. Oh, and not to have to make the first move by herself. After all, out of everyone, at least _someone_ had to be a socially awkward lovable dork who befriended people just because. Jaune was literally friendly to everyone but her! He'd been okay with _Cardin_ calling him an animal, but he kept his distance from her! It was totally unfair!

And even in the forest, where she managed to get Jaune's attention for a grand total of twenty or so seconds, he just _had_ to turn out with a stupid allergy to the stuff! It was like a gigantic, cosmic joke! Was her pain so amusing for the Gods?

Grumbling to herself, she moved to a tree near a clearing with a small hill in it, thinking that maybe the trees at the edge received more sunlight, were healthier and hopefully produced more sap. It was all very theoretical: she didn't have a degree in Botany or anything. Heck, she never even had a plant in a pot or something!

Sometimes she wondered if the Gods were angry at her because of how she used her Semblance in the tournaments. Sure, it wasn't like she _needed_ it often, but she had to use it in order to maintain her perfect no-hit record. Maybe the Gods were angry because the use of her Semblance humiliated her opponents, who suddenly had their weapons unusable. Or maybe it was because she kept it a secret to gain an edge over the competition.

Either way, she was pretty sure it couldn't possibly get worse.

"There are no tree here, Jaune!" The high-pitched voice of the girl who seemed to hate her as if she'd killed her puppy rang out from her left. She withheld a groan. The Gods really couldn't give her a break, could they? "Stay here while we get the sap."

"Woof…" Jaune's deadpan bark had her stifling a giggle.

Evidently, she wasn't quiet enough, and two pairs of eyes turned around to stare at her. She quickly held up her hands in surrender. "S-Sorry, it was a funny joke…"

If her laugh had bothered Jaune, it didn't show. The short girl, however, seemed to have developed a slight eye twitch. Then she marched over to the champion herself…

…who was just utterly confused. The girl had kept her distance for a week straight, and managed to keep her away from Jaune as well. Also, she seemed to be kinda afraid of her, so it made absolutely no sense for her to be coming to talk to her. Especially when Cardin Winchester, that racist prick leader of Team CRDL, was standing on the top of the small hill with his team, as if that was a good hiding place, with a jar of red stuff in his hands. Oh, no wait, he'd just thrown it at Jaune.

…

…

…

"Jaune!" The blond looked up at her.

"Nyrla, I-" Ruby began, misspelling her name too., but she didn't go very far.

_Crack. Splat._ "Gah! Eugh!"

The jar had hit the poor Jaune, who was now covered in sticky red sap. Ruby whirled around the moment she heard the crack, just in time to see Jaune being splattered with red liquid.

Pyrrha didn't know why she screamed and ran over to him, shouting something like 'Jaune's dying' or something. It was clearly just some sap. Sure, he was allergic, but overall a quick wash would remove it. He didn't look _that_ allergic.

Unfortunately for him, a lot of the sap had gotten on his head, which meant no sight, next to no smell and of course the sneezes the allergy oh-so-kindly gave him.

"Wuby?" he called out weakly, trying to wipe away the stuff. "I _ph_ink a _f_ree fell on me…"

"Jaune, are you okay? Can you hear me? Don't go towards the light!"

Go towards the… was that girl serious? It was just some sap!

And then the buzzing began.

It was pretty sudden, which meant those Rapier Wasps had to have been very close by. She remembered that many Grimm were attracted to sweet scents, and that sap was diabetes-inducing level of sweetness. Grimm would swarm him.

Which meant she had to take action.

She deployed her sword and shield, determined to help and save Jaune.

Now, it must be said that Pyrrha was an incredible warrior. She could read her opponents' movements and foresee their attacks without the need of a Semblance. Even when said opponents were not in her sight or she couldn't see them well, she still had more than enough experience and skills to guess what their next move would be. In addition, even when caught off-guard by an opponent's technique, she was quick to escape and analyse it so to learn its weaknesses. Her Semblance was a last-resort she only used when she was about to be hit or thrown out of the ring because something hit her shield too hard.

That being said, Pyrrha was still human, which meant she could still be taken by surprise.

Ruby's scythe slamming into her face the second she drew her weapons was one such surprise.

However, the surprise wasn't the one to send her flying back and into a tree, that was all the weapon's doing. Give credit where credit is due, surprise could only do so much.

"Stay away from him! I won't let you harm him!"

She must've been hit much harder than she thought, because it made absolutely no sense. Why would she want to harm Jaune? She'd literally just tried to save him! No matter, she had to get up and- oh look how lovely it is to look down the barrel of a high-calibre rifle pointed at your face.

"Don't move!" Ruby ordered, silver eyes shining. "I knew it! You were just waiting for the right moment!"

Jaune, a few feet away, just scratched his head. "Uh… Ruby, what's going on?"

"I caught the evildoer!"

"The tree…?"

"No, Myrrha!"

"Marry who?"

Trying to ignore the absurd conversation going on between the two, Pyrrha looked up to see five or six small Rapier Wasps raising from the top of her hill. They were going to attack Jaune! "Look out!"

"Myrrha, not marry!"

"Who's Myrrha?"

"Your killer!"

"I'm dead?"

It was too much. "There's a swarm of Rapier Wasps!" Pyrrha called out, and then had to use her Semblance when her shout jolted Ruby, which resulted in her blowing a hole in the bark two inches above her head.

_'Note to self, never startle Ruby when she's holding a gun to your head.'_

Turning around, Ruby immediately blew up one such Rapier Wasp. "We'll continue this conversation later! Jaune, turn into a wolf and start running around! That should keep them away!"

"Right!" Jaune nodded, and immediately turned into a wolf much smaller than the monstrous beast she'd seen before. It was now normal-sized. He began to run around blindly, trying not to stay still long enough for the Wasps to reach him.

Pyrrha, however, saw the flaw in that plan. "Jaune, look out! There's a-"

_Conk_.

"-tree…" Good Lord, now he'd knocked himself out by running at full speed into a tree.

Meanwhile, Ruby shot another one of those Rapier Wasps. "Incoming!"

They were fast. Maybe too fast. But eventually, weak. Pyrrha conked one with her shield before cutting it in two.

The other three went straight for Jaune. Seeing as shooting at them with Jaune right behind was a bad idea, Ruby used her Semblance and killed another one.

The other two, however, reached the unconscious boy… wolf… Faunus… whatever.

And launched their stingers.

Pyrrha could only watch in horror as one pierced right through the wolf's muzzle, and the other went straight through his shoulder.

Aura was a wonderful thing… too bad it didn't activate when one was unconscious.

The good news were that Jaune immediately shot awake. He tried to scream, but that was kinda hard with a stinger impaling your head. At least he didn't die instantly. Maybe they still had time – though not much of it, since Rapier Wasp poison was a numbing agent, and it was never good to numb the brain.

Ruby killed one of two while she took care of the last one. Those ugly monsters were dead, but the wounds and the poison wasn't. Thankfully it was a numbing poison, so all Jaune let out was a high-pitched animal whine.

Pyrrha stayed back. She wanted to help, extremely so, but that'd mean getting close to Ruby, and the girl probably didn't want that. The best option was to call Ms Goodwitch and tell her what happened. And hope Jaune would recover.

Looking at him, the wounds seemed painful, but not lethal. The first stinger had pierced his muzzle, impaling through his mouth, but had missed the brain. It had to be excruciatingly painful, especially since the sap in his eyes took sight away from him, and taking away a sense so important usually sharpened the rest.

After only a single beep, Goodwitch picked up. _"Miss Nikos?"_

"Jaune is in critical condition! A group of Grimm-"

_"Say no more. Remain where you are and protect him. I'm on my way."_

Pyrrha was suddenly glad Beacon's Professors were so efficient. They helped before they asked.

/-/

Jaune was now stable. Out of danger. Well, he'd never been in life danger, actually, but the injury was severe. Reverting back into human form was a tricky matter, since the injury was in a part of his body that wasn't easily related to a part of his human body. His shoulder was bandaged and unusable for the time being, but bound to heal soon, thanks to his Aura.

His face, however, was another story. His nose was ruined, and his mouth had injuries that shouldn't have possibly been there, since reverting back to human had shifted the injuries without taking in consideration logic.

He would heal – Beacon's infirmary was staffed by people with healing Semblances, obviously. His own Aura would help a lot. Maybe he would get a scar, maybe he wouldn't. Within another week, he should've been back to perfect health. He was currently sleeping, tired out by both the accident and the healing from the infirmary staff.

The matter at hand was something else, however.

Due to them not being directly involved, Team SYLN hadn't been called to the Headmaster office, even though Yang had been quite furious at that. She'd only calmed down when Ruby reasoned that if she hadn't seen anything, then it'd be pointless for her to be there, and that she'd tell her everything later.

Blake and, obviously, Jaune were absent as well. The girl had checked on the boy, but nothing more.

Pyrrha, her, and Team CRDL had been summoned. Said team had complained about it since they claimed not to have been witnessed anything, and Ruby actually believed that – it would've been stupid to stick around with the Wasps. However, they had _caused_ it! Pyrrha had told her everything!

Not that she was all buddy-buddy with Pyrrha, of course, but it's not like she lied _all the time_. Just when she said she didn't want to harm Jaune.

Ha! Laughable. She'd figured it out. Pyrrha had been hired by Weiss to kill Jaune, because the SDC used Faunus as slave labour like Blake said and because Jaune had tripped into her at Initiation and turned her into a wolf, twice! It all fit.

Paying the killer more wasn't an option, Weiss was rich enough to buy out Patch. Still, it meant that maybe Pyrrha wouldn't try to take the first chance she'd get to kill him – maybe Weiss would order her to when the time came.

Twice as suspicious!

Back to the present, she was currently seated on a very non-comfy wooden chair, with Pyrrha to her right and Team CRDL on the other side of the champion.

Oh, and Ozpin was talking.

"I will ask you once again, Mr Winchester. How did things play out?"

Cardin just shrugged, ignoring Ruby's death glare. "Sir, I told you, we got our jars of sap and then just lazed off for a while. We chose that clearing because it was a clearing, obviously, so less trees to cover the light. And we were chatting. I'll admit it, we ran when we saw the Rapier Wasps instead of fighting them, but in our defence we had no idea there were other people around. Plus, I've heard some stories about Wasps piercing through Aura and I didn't want to test it out personally, since Dove's the only one with a ranged weapon. Had we had guns, maybe we would've shot them but Dove alone didn't have time. And then we just ran back to the rendezvous."

"That's not true, you threw a jar at-"

"Ms Rose, please refrain from interrupting again." Ozpin looked at Pyrrha. "Ms Nikos, your story was quite different. You claimed to have clearly seen Mr Winchester throw a jar of sap at Mr Rose-Xiao Long. You also claim that since Rapier Wasps are hard to find in the forest of Forever Fall, Mr Winchester might've captured a few and then released them in Forever Fall, as some sort of prank on your teammate. Is that right?"

"The most honest truth, sir," she nodded.

Ozpin turned to her. "What about you, Ms Rose?"

"Pyrrha's telling the truth! Cardin wanted to hurt Jaune! He's been bullying him ever since school started!" Ruby exclaimed heatedly. "He's a racist bully! He hates Jaune because of how he looks!"

Cardin rolled his eyes, and once Ozpin gave him permission to speak, so he did. "Look, I'm not denying I don't like him. Call me whatever you want, racist, bully, jerk, whatever. I don't like Faunus, never felt the need to hide that truth."

"So you admit it!" Ruby exclaimed, triumphantly.

"Let me finish!" She lowered herself back on her seat. "_But_, that doesn't mean I'd go out of my way just to play a prank on them, especially during a school assignment. That'd be just stupid. Especially since you all _already_ hate my guts. And that's why you faked this whole thing!"

"What?!" For once, she and Pyrrha were in perfect agreement.

"Didn't you? You all hated me, it'd be way too easy to fake an accident and blame it on me! Or maybe you actually have some rivalry amongst you and hate each other! I saw the way you throw Nikos death glares, it's possible that the whole thing was organized by her!" Ruby stopped, and Cardin shrugged. "Makes sense too, I mean, you said you brought Jauney Boy in that clearing for some fresh air. Then why was Nikos there too? Especially, without anyone else nearby?"

Ruby sat back down. That… that made way too much sense.

"Are you implying I planned all of this?!" Pyrrha exclaimed, outraged and shocked. "That I planned to _injure_ my own _teammate_?!"

Cardin held his hands up. "Hey, not saying you wanted to hurt him or anything, just saying you might've wanted to prank them or something, dunno, for revenge. You don't really seem to get along with the rest of the your teams, SYLN and RPBY. Even Schnee fits in better than you, and she acts like a haughty princess. I'm just saying, don't drag me in when this is a matter between you and your teammates."

"I didn't do it!" Pyrrha exclaimed, turning to her. "Ruby, tell him I'd never do something like that."

Ruby was silent. It did kind of make sense. _She_ hadn't seen anything, Pyrrha had been the one to tell her everything that had happened. And she _had_ drawn her weapons before the Wasps had even appeared. And she _had_ seen the jar when no one else had.

Wait… the jar!

"If Pyrrha had been the one to do it, how did she throw the jar of sap at him? And why did she try to warn him?" she rebutted, not agreeing with Pyrrha but at least arguing with Cardin.

Ozpin just sipped his hot cocoa. That was better than going at the cinema. And then people wondered how could he love such a paperwork-filled occupation.

"I didn't say she _personally_ did it," Cardin replied blandly. "I'm just saying she could've planned it and then played distraction."

"It was you and you know it," Pyrrha basically growled at him. And to think, he'd offered her advice on what to drink when she was feeling depressed! The nerve of that boy…

Behind him, Cardin's team shrugged. "Honestly, what Cardin said does make sense," said Sky.

"Yeah, we just never really paid attention to you enough to see your fractures in the teams," added Russel. "I guess that's why we need a team leader, heh."

Eventually, Ozpin sighed, knowing the fun had to end sooner rather than later. He didn't want Ms Nikos and Ms Rose to send Team CRDL to the infirmary. He picked up his Scroll and began tapping away at it. "Now, now, now. No need to fight. Because, there is one thing you should know about the Forest of Forever Fall…"

Images began to appear in a holographic projector built in the desk itself. First showed an aerial map of Forever Fall, with tiny dots labelled with names. Their names. Team CRDL was clearly standing near Jaune's, Ruby's and Pyrrha's dots, while the rest of the students were nowhere near them. Then a video feed appeared, showing the conversation between Ruby and Pyrrha, Cardin throwing the jar, the fight, and of course Cardin releasing the Wasps. Not in that order, obviously.

"…it's filled with cameras."


	9. A Game of Cat and Wolf

Ruby knew they needed to talk. It was long overdue… well, maybe not that long since it had only been a week… but it was clear it was time to explain and let her explain.

After Cardin was punished alongside his whole team, and she didn't know what it was since she and Pyrrha had been sent out of the room, the shorter redhead had been made keenly aware of how paranoid she'd been, all because her parents had stressed her out on how a lot of people hated the Faunus.

They also said that Jaune's Semblance would attract a lot of dislike because of what it did.

She took it as a request to be an overprotective sister.

It had worked for quite a while, especially since Jaune wasn't exactly very good at socializing. He barely had any friend outside the family, and even then they were all friends of Yang's who often came over and befriended the boy as well.

Often just to be able to ride him in wolf form and have a pic taken of them.

Anyway, truth was, maybe she hadn't really been the best suited for the task. After all, she was awful at interacting with people herself!

So maybe she had misjudged Pyrrha.

Which meant Weiss probably _hadn't_ hired her to kill Jaune for whatever the reason, especially since she didn't seem to have anything against him aside from a very very bad first and second impressions. Which meant she'd been wrong all along, and she hadn't even noticed. And she had made Jaune think Pyrrha was bad or something because she acted weird around her!

Or maybe Jaune just didn't like the taller redhead for some reason.

In any case, she had to make it right.

Right away.

Which was why she'd dragged Pyrrha to the courtyard instead of heading back to their dorms.

Which was why she was now staring up at her, awkwardly trying to find the right words.

Which was why- "Ruby? Are you okay?"

Pyrrha's voice tore her from her thoughts. Startled, she almost jumped three feet up in the air. "What? Oh, yes, o-of course I'm fine, why wouldn't I be?" Taking a deep breath, she continued, "I was just… thinking."

"Oh, I'm sorry for distracting you," she apologized immediately. "But I thought you brought me here to talk…"

"I did! I did," Ruby hurried to confirm. It wouldn't do to have her walk away on her. "It's just… It's hard to put it into words…"

Pyrrha looked at her for a few seconds before a metaphorical lightbulb went off above her head. "You mean, about what happened in the forest? Ruby, I told you, I didn't-"

"It's not you, Pyrrha, it's me I need to talk about," the shorter redhead interrupted her, raising her hands as if to stop the explanation ready to come out of her mouth. "Look, I was _waaay_ over the top."

"I think you mean over the line."

"Whatever! I was paranoid. I hated you for no good reason, and caused me to fracture the team." Ruby looked down with a sigh. "I'm not some kind of super student. I don't know the first thing about leading a team. And now I'm tearing it apart. Ever since the start, it was _me_, not you."

"Ruby, spilt milk is spilt and can't be salvaged. What's done is done." Pyrrha smiled at her. "But what is yet to be done can still be changed. If you want to make this up to me, to the team, why don't you explain why you were so paranoid in the first place?"

Ruby sighed. "We adopted Jaune after he lost his family to the Grimm." Pyrrha gasped, bringing a hand up to her mouth. "He doesn't even remember them, it was a long time ago. We adopted him because no one else would. I know what some Faunus have to go through. My mother was an active Huntress at the time, she saw what kind of discrimination there is against Faunus, and my father is a teacher at Signal, he knows this goes on in school as well." Ruby sighed again, hugging herself. "And Jaune's Semblance makes it worse. A Faunus, with an animal-themed transformation Semblance? They'd be all over him. It'd be both the perfect symbol for the White Fang, and the perfect target for racists."

Pyrrha slowly nodded. "I think I'm beginning to understand. You kept everyone away to protect him."

"Yang was right, I need to lower my guard because not everyone is out for his blood. But how can I? Mom and Dad made him spend almost his entire life indoors or near our house in fear of what could've happened to him. Even after he started training, it didn't get much better, especially because Jaune has a hard time understanding racist insults."

"That explains why he didn't consider Cardin a bully," commented the champion, putting her hands on her hips. "I'm guessing he's received worse?"

"Patch is a very peaceful island, but there are a few bad apples on every tree," replied Ruby, dejected. "It was never too bad. Whoever tried to fight him usually got the short end of the stick. You've seen him, he's far from helpless. But it was there, and Mom always stresses him on not using his Semblance unless he strictly needs to to try and keep those insults to a minimum. But to Jaune, changing form is second nature, and sometimes accidents happen, so my parents always told me and Yang to watch out for him." She awkwardly poked her indexes together. "I just don't want him to be around people who hate him just because of how he looks. I never thought _I_ would eventually be the reason Jaune got in trouble. Hadn't I been so paranoid, I would've seen that jar. Or Jaune wouldn't have been distracted. Or you would've shot it before it hit him. Whatever! But because of me and my paranoia, Jaune's in the infirmary now."

She looked up when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Pyrrha smiled sadly down at her. "Ruby, don't berate yourself. Maybe you _were_ too overprotective of him, but that's not such a bad thing. It shows you care a lot about him. And given how tense the current political situation is, and how people view the Faunus, I can understand why you would worry like that." Her other hand joined the first on her other shoulder. "You recognized you made a mistake. Now, I cannot say this didn't cause trouble because it did. To Jaune and to the team as a whole."

Ruby looked down again, but a hand lifted her chin back up. Pyrrha's smile becoming supporting. "However, hope is far from lost. We can fix the team back up. _We_ are good now. Blake seems to be a tad uncomfortable with us at the moment, especially you and Yang. For some reason I've seen her staring at you and your sister while writing in some kind of notebook she pulls out of her… never mind. Jaune… well, I'm sure you know him better than me, but he doesn't look like someone who could ever hold a grudge."

Ruby winced. "Well…"

"Let me guess – he actually is."

"It's not exactly like that. After discovering his Semblance, Jaune's natural instincts got stronger. While he always calls us his family, to him we're his pack. An attack to a member of the pack is an attack to the pack." She bit her lip. "And an attack to the pack…"

"Needs to be retaliated against," completed Pyrrha, eyes widening. "Just… how much do you think…?"

"A lot. He may not be an _actual_ wolf, but he's just as vindictive when it comes to his family," Ruby explained grimly, revealing the _other_ reason why she'd been so worried. "Once he gets out of the infirmary, his revenge could be anything from a prank to actual injuries. He won't kill anyone but he could seriously hurt them. Or he could get hurt. Let's not forget Cardin's no pushover."

"And if he does, he could get in trouble," added Pyrrha.

The youngest Rose child looked at her flatly because shrugging. "That too, I guess. It's just… preventing physical injuries is kind of our priority right now."

"True, but honestly, if it's Cardin, he has it coming." She frowned in distaste at the thought of the bully. "Not only he attacked Jaune, and us, but he even dared to try and avoid taking the responsibility of his actions by blaming it on us. I won't wish him ill, but-"

"Like the meme goes: 'I don't hate you, but if you were on fire and I had some water, I'd drink it'?" Ruby offered.

"Not to that extend but yes," Pyrrha nodded, though she inwardly wondered what a meme was. "Now, as I was saying, our team is already fractured. We need to fix it soon, which means also watching out for Jaune's revenge, am I right?"

Ruby nodded, she could easily see the logic behind her reasoning.

"We should talk to Blake. Aside from his revenge, Jaune doesn't have any problem with you, and if you tell him we made up he won't have problems with me, just like at the beginning of the year." The first part of the plan sounded so easy when she said it. It'd be much harder to actually put into practice. "Any idea on how you could dissuade Jaune from getting revenge?"

"Give him time, he only holds grudges for a while before it fades," Ruby replied, knowing fully well that 'a while' was usually still more than enough to cause a lot of trouble. "That, or keep him busy. It usually works."

"Maybe we should ask him to do something for the team, something that requires a fair bit of time?" Pyrrha frowned, trying to think of what that might be.

"Well, weekends are school-free," shrugged Ruby. "Maybe we can send him home for a couple of days, to Mom and Dad? I would go with him, and maybe you can try to talk with Blake. She doesn't seem to have any problem with you."

"That might work," Pyrrha nodded before smiling. "Now, let's hope this plan actually does survive contact with the enemy."

"Blake's our enemy now?" Ruby frowned, confused. Surely it wouldn't be Jaune, but it wasn't like she disliked the black-haired girl… even if the other did for some reason.

"It's just a saying I've been taught, never to rely too much on strategies," the champion waved her off. "Our enemy is the fracture in our team, not someone specifically."

"Okay then, it's a Thursday, so I'll have to keep Jaune out of trouble for just two days before the-" Just then, a loud wolf's howl ripped through the air, scaring Pyrrha half to death. Ruby looked a bit sheepish as she took the call. "Uh… yeah, Yang?"

_"Jaune's out of the infirmary. Just so you know. Where are you?"_

"I'm after him!"

_"Ruby, he's your brother, you shouldn't-"_

Ruby cut the call before Yang could finish. That joke got old five years ago anyway. It didn't even embarrass her any more.

She turned to look at Pyrrha, who was just as worried as she should've been. "There is a problem…"

"Your Scroll's ring being a howl?" Pyrrha inquired.

"No. Jaune's been released. He's probably gonna make sure we're okay, then…"

The champion had already taken off running.

"WAIT!"

Pyrrha almost face-planted into the ground, so suddenly she stopped. "What? What is it? Is he here?"

"No, but finding him isn't going to work!" Ruby grinned. "He wants to make sure we're okay, _personally_. So, if we hide… He's going to look for us instead of going after Cardin and his team! We just have to play Hide and Seek with him for a while. Just a few hours. Then, once he finds us – and trust me, he _will_ find us – we can try to stop him from getting revenge."

"And how are we going to hide from someone who can smell us out in a few minutes?"

"We run faster than he does!"

/-/

Blake was at loss on what to do.

After figuring out that Jaune had been brainwashed by the Rose-Xiao Long sisters, she had been on her guard all the time, looking out for any further clue or proof to use against them once she finally uncovered their lies for the world to see.

But she had found nothing. Or, well, nothing she could use as actual proof. To someone who _knew_, it was obvious how Jaune had been mistreated in his past, but getting people to see it was the hard part. She had to solid evidence that Jaune had been brainwashed. The whole process had probably been long and accurate, so the boy didn't even know what they'd done to him.

She would always do her best to help her Faunus brothers and sisters whenever possible, but how was she supposed to help Jaune?

He would always believe his captors' word against hers. They had taught him to do that. And even showing him how Faunus usually don't act like him would only make him feel isolated and ostracised. She didn't want that.

She needed something to help her make him understand. Something even he couldn't deny. Maybe finding a few Faunus who would willingly share their pasts so to make him realize how his own wasn't normal because of how he'd been treated, but where would she find Faunus _without_ a tragic backstory like hers?

It wouldn't do to show him just how racism usually ruined the Faunus' lives, because then he'd assume his own childhood had been normal. And that was very counterproductive!

If only she could understand exactly _what_ they had done to him, but without that knowledge, she was in the dark. No, in the dark she could see thanks to her night vision, she was blindfolded.

Mmh, kinky.

Nevertheless, she needed to find a way.

She was so lost in thought, that she hadn't even realizing she'd left her dorm room and had walked all the way to the entrance hall, not until she bumped into someone on the way.

That was a first.

As sexy ninja, she had to be two things. Sexy, and a ninja. She had both down perfectly, but then how hadn't she noticed someone was walking her way until it was too late?!

"Oh, sorry Blake, I didn't see you."

Well, at least she was stealthy even when lost in thought. "It's no problem, Yang," Blake waved off the blonde girl's apology before she looked around, noticing a distinct lack of additional people. "Where is the rest of your team?"

"Oh, Weiss dragged Ren and Nora to Vale." Yang snorted, rolling her lilac eyes in obvious amusement. "She wants to spy on the competition for the Vytal Festival by analysing the arriving exchange students."

Blake hid an amused smile at that. "I'm guessing that's not how she phrased it, right?"

"Totally." Yang then mimicked Weiss's higher and strictest voice. "_I am not checking out the competition, Yang! I just wish to welcome them in Vale, is all_. Yeah, sure."

The 'secret' (read: no one will ever know just how she managed to hide it for more than thirty seconds) Faunus smirked once again. "What about you? Do you not want to see who you'll be fighting?"

Yang shrugged. "Meh. Part of the thrill is being surprised by your opponent. That would take some of the fun out of it."

"If you say so…" Blake was then suddenly struck by an idea, harder than the male anatomy in her books. "Yang, how many Faunus do you think will participate at the Festival?"

The blonde looked surprised by the random yet specific question, but didn't bother to guess why she'd asked. "Dunno. A few, I guess."

Her idea was perfect! It involve recruiting perfect strangers and lead them through the holy mission of eradicating discrimination through any necessary mean, starting with helping Jaune realize he was _not_ an animal like he'd been brought to think. It was a foolproof idea that could not, in any way, possibly go South. The moral compass pointed North all the way!

Furthermore, Faunus should stick together. Which didn't mean humans shouldn't _offer_ them to integrate themselves into society, it was just that Faunus should always keep in mind that discrimination unified them all.

"Of course, after all, a few hard-working Faunus can still manage to beat prejudice and join the Academies," Blake nodded absent-mindedly before smiling politely, even if she was right in front of one of Jaune's torturers. "Well, what are _you_ doing now, Yang?"

The blonde shrugged with a grin. "I'm trying to find Jaune and Ruby. Jaune's just been released from the infirmary, he's pretty vindictive when he wants to so I really want to catch him before he can attack Cardin."

She raised an eyebrow. "I didn't think you were the type to stop a fight."

"I'm not, I'm only there to watch." Yang grinned once more and shoulder-bumped her before walking away. "See ya around, Blakey!"

Blake nodded vaguely, already drowning in the ocean of thoughts swirling around in her head. She had to get to Vale, and soon. Hopefully _before_ she Schnee-devil scared off the Faunus attending the Vytal Festival.

Not that she'd ever do it intentionally, she was 'above' such 'barbaric' behaviour. But the presence and insults of a Schnee would be more than enough to cower a lot of Faunus.

She could probably catch a Bullhead. And then, she'd watch out for any potential helpers. Once she found some suitable comrades, she would win them over by seducing them with her irresistible charm, her eye-catching chest, and of course her unfairly (to the rest of the female population) perfect ass. She had it all. She wouldn't even need to say a word, and guys and girls would be falling over each other to help her.

It would surely go like that.

/-/

It did not go like that. At all.

Not to get her wrong, Sun Wukong was a great guy, but not exactly the kind she had in mind to help her with Jaune's problems. He was outgoing, upbeat, cheerful, optimistic and always ready and willing to help. He was apparently a good Hunter-in-training and the leader of his team.

Also, he didn't seem to mind her best features much, like her ass, instead focusing on her face and her voice. That was weird, it never went like that in her books. People were supposed to be sex gods willing to fuck at first meeting, not extrovert gentlemen with a smile on their face and more innocence than a child. That was definitely not part of the plan. If he didn't look at her ass, how was she supposed to convince him to help her?

"So, you've been staring at me for the past half hour, and you glare at me whenever I speak, just like that," Sun suddenly spoke up, earning himself one such glare, which was more of a deadpan really. "Not that I don't like being asked out by a pretty girl, of course! I'm just wondering why. People don't usually take strangers to bars for no reason."

Underneath his cheer, she detected a hint of suspicion. He seemed to be a bit wary of her.

Maybe he had a point. After she'd saved him from those racist cops, so full of prejudice, and had brought him to that bar, he might've gotten the wrong idea. Maybe he thought she was recruiting him into the White Fang or something – which was completely wrong! She'd left the White Fang behind. Terrorism was not her thing anyway.

"I need your help. Or, well, I need help and you just so happen to be the first I could ask to," she stated bluntly, putting down her cup of tea.

Sun's expression didn't change much. He only got a tad confused. "Uh… Okay, what do you need help with?"

"One of my friends, a Faunus, is being subjugated and oppressed because of his heritage," Blake replied sternly, trying to do her best Goodwitch impression. "I can't do much on my own. I tried, but I think his sisters are suspicious of me, so I need someone _else_ to befriend him and help him out of his situation."

"Wait wait wait, what are you talking about?" Sun frowned, taken aback. "And why would his sisters be suspicious of you trying to help him? It's not like you've been dragging him into closets or anything."

Of course not, that was for hot, mind-blowing sex. Who did he think she was? "No! Just some empty classrooms."

He looked at her, incredulous, for a few seconds, then slowly nodded. "You need more help than I thought."

Blake shook her head. "I'm not crazy! I just don't know how else I'm supposed to help him, if not by getting some alone time with him! Besides, his 'sisters' are the ones who are subjugating him, I have to get him away from them, but they always keep an eye on him!"

Sun scratched the back of his head and laughed awkwardly. "Yeeeeaaaah, I guess a bit of a lesson on how to interact with people is in order."

/-/

Jaune Arc walked the streets of Vale with narrowed eyes. He got more than a few looks, and a lot of glares, but he ignored all of those, preferring to only mind the scent he was following.

Wolves, like all canines except for the teeth, could easily pick out a single scent, even old ones, from the sea of smells of a city – even if the scent quickly disappeared.

Currently, the one he was tracking belonged to a certain little sister of his. Normally, Yang would be the one to hide after one of her pranks, but this time it was Ruby. Ruby, and that girl, Pyrrha.

Usually he'd be in his wolf form, which helped a lot with tracking. He had a hound's sense of smell, literally. However, even he knew that it wouldn't do much good to freak out the entirety of Vale. He knew people didn't like large wolves wandering around – Yang's previous love adventures proved that whenever the girl brought someone home.

Now, he was in his human form, which weakened his smell a bit, but not enough to make it useless. It also somehow earned him a lot more glares. Why would people glare at Faunus more than they would glare at animals? It really didn't make sense.

His excellent sense of smell lead him all the way across the city, rounding corners and at one point even bringing him on the roofs, jumping from one to the other. He felt like he was somewhat gaining in on them. There were no powerful smells to cover up his target's well enough to fool him. It was a city – lots of different smells, but no overpowering ones.

Except for one.

Jaune sighed as he finally stopped, the fishy smell giving him a headache, right in front of Vale's docks.

Where Ruby _knew_ she'd lose him.

He _hated_ when she did that.

_'It won't hurt to check it out, I guess,'_ he thought to himself, unaware of what he was about to walk into.

Besides, what could possibly happen at the docks?

/-/

Ruby and Pyrrha hated their luck. They really _really_ hated it.

Of all the places Roman Torchwick could've gone to steal some Dust, it had to be the docks. Not only that, but where were the authorities while the thief committed his hideous crimes? Weren't huge shipments of Dust from the Schnee Dust Company supposed to be heavily guarded and supervised at all times, even in the dead of the night? And it wasn't even night yet!

Also, how could the _White Fang_ be working alongside a human, especially one who called them 'animals'. It was like Jaune getting along with Cardin. Totally not happening.

Hundreds of Jaunes and Cardins in the multiverse sneezed and bonked heads together, having been sitting too close to each other as they chatted about school and classes.

"Something's wrong here," Ruby said in a whisper. "We need to stop them."

"I agree, we cannot let a crime go unpunished. It would make us guilty as accomplices," Pyrrha nodded, just as determined. "And if what you said is right, Jaune will be here to help us out soon. If things go South, the authorities will be attracted by the noise. Are you ready?"

Ruby grinned as she deployed her scythe. "Let's do this."

**_This is a short chapter, about 4/5 of a normal chapter. This is both because this story is pretty hard for me to write, and because I have a guest so I can't just spend all my free time writing. I wrote this while she was doing some logarythms. I'm cruel, I know._**

**_Until next time,_**

**_Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh_**


	10. Catfight at the Docks

**_As sorry for delaying this and writing ViewingTES instead (which didn't go as well as planned, huh? XD Damn I haven't had enough tea today...), this chapter is 6k words long. Which is not unheard of from me, but which is still longer than the usual Rose chapter._**

**_AN about the story at the end, if you're the type to follow those ANs._**

As he stepped down the airship, Roman Torchwick had a good feeling about tonight. He'd had a huge stroke of luck, and found a large Dust shipment completely unguarded. Of course he'd just at the opportunity, but to tell the truth, he'd been more than a little suspicious at first.

After all, the SDC was known for not trusting anyone but themselves and money, which meant it was _extremely_ unlikely for their cargoes to be unguarded. He had to dig up some information before he learned that all the guards had apparently shared a meal at a local fast food in Atlas, and had gotten sick on their way to Vale as a result.

He also made a note to never eat at an Atlasian fast food. He was too high-class to eat at fast foods anywhere, but he made a note to especially avoid the Atlasian ones.

Still, those guards' misfortune had been a godsend for him. On the list of kindest bosses, Cinder was at the very bottom, right above Grimm. While failures wouldn't be met with instant death, he had the feeling she would kill him anyway as soon as she had no use of him any longer, which made his work even worse – the more he worked, the faster Cinder's plan was prepared, which also might've meant the sooner he'd be of no use. But slacking off would mean incurring in Cinder's rage, which was a death sentence waiting to be signed. He had no illusion he'd be able to match up to her in terms of fighting.

In the end, it wasn't even _his_ fault the robberies and theft went poorly! He was a great thief, and a mastermind. But the thugs he was forced to employ en masse ruined everything and weren't even any good in a fight. A little girl who couldn't have been any older than thirteen had defeated four grown men in their thirties or forties within five seconds, and without breaking a sweat.

He was fairly confident that he would've been able to defeat Little Red Reaping Hood in a fight, but not all the policemen he'd known were coming, so he had just left her behind and booked out of there. Then that Huntress arrived and made everything ten times as hard.

He'd initially thought the White Fang would've been a good replacement for Junior's thugs, but instead…

"Hey!" he called out, getting the attention of the White Fang idiots who were just standing outside the airship, doing nothing. "What's the hold-up?"

They all looked at each other, but none spoke up.

They were no better than animals. All they were good for were eating, sleeping, being annoying, and fighting. And he wasn't so sure about that last one.

"We're not exactly the most inconspicuous bunch of thieves at the moment," he tried to explain to them. After all, it would've been better if his thugs actually _knew_ why they had to hurry – that way, it was more likely they'd _actually_ hurry up instead of just speeding up for a second and slacking off the moment he turned away. "So, why don't you animals try to pick up the pace?"

He stepped out of the airship and suppressed a sigh. He almost regretted Junior's men. Almost. For someone who asked so much, Cinder gave surprisingly little budget. He'd heard she'd paid the White Fang well, but he actually doubted it – if she couldn't even bother to give him some better men for his thefts, then he doubted she'd just paid the White Fang to join her. Most likely she held them at flame point and threatened them with death if they disobeyed.

His words seemed to get through their thick skulls, and the White Fang began to spread out to find the Dust. Hopefully, it would be over soon, and they could all go home. They had to steal several containers' worth, so the sooner they started, the sooner it was over.

But of course it couldn't just go like that. Torchwick had just managed to get a crate of Dust on the Bullhead, that one of the animals dressed as humans came to him with an armful of thick steel cable. "Hey boss, should we take this?"

_'No, for several reasons, you damn mutt or whatever animal you are. First, Lightning Dust can generate electricity, so if we use ropes, we should ensure they are not good conductors. Second, I never told you to use a rope, I told you to get the Dust. Third, we would need at the very least a dozen more metres if it were to be of any use. Ah, why should I even bother to say that, they wouldn't understand anyway.'_ Torchwick angrily chewed on his cigar as he chewed off the man. "No, you idiot. This isn't a leash…" He threw in that comment just to mess with him more. "Just get the Dust, forget about ropes. We're not here for them."

The guy nodded and rushed away, as if his reply had suddenly cleared his mind, but Roman knew better. They guy would probably come back with a colourful toy cube and ask if that was okay.

He looked around. The White Fang seemed to be doing their job, although not nearly as fast as he would've liked. The sky was still dark, and there were no signs of guards, police officers, Hunters or the docks' staff.

_'To whatever Gods actually exist, thank you.'_

"Hey!" Torchwick looked to his right and right on cue, Little Red Reaping Hood appeared on the top of a nearby roof, stabbing her scythe through the concrete. He also noted that there was someone else with her. The second person was behind the girl, so he couldn't really see who it was, but they seemed to have red hair and a golden outfit. Like, bright red hair and literal gold or bronze as an outfit. Not exactly the best in terms of stealthiness.

"Well hello, Red," he greeted her, not acknowledging the one behind her. They might've been a threat, but there was no point in worrying about someone he couldn't even clearly see or evaluate their capabilities. "Isn't it past your bed time?"

He couldn't hear what they said unless they shouted it, but from what he could see, it looked as if the one behind Red had gotten her attention somehow. In any case, it was enough. While Little Red was turned to talk to her friend, he raised his cane and shot a blast at her.

It probably wouldn't kill her anyway. Not that he really cared if it did.

Around him, the White Fang _finally_ took notice and dropped what they were carrying to grab their weapons. Which really annoyed him because who the hell would drop _Dust_? Especially when _surrounded_ by other Dust? It was just asking to be blown to kingdom come.

However, the blast never hit Little Red. Oh, it exploded in front of her, sure, but as the smoke cleared, Torchwick could clearly see that the second person, who turned out to be a girl with long hair, bronze sexy-warrior armour from some movie, a sword and a circular shield, had stepped in front of Little Red and parried the blast with her shield.

Roman's brow furrowed. From afar, he couldn't see that clearly but… that girl looked familiar, very familiar.

Then it suddenly clicked.

_'Gods, I don't believe in you any more.'_

/-/

Pyrrha didn't like the idea of fighting Torchwick and his thugs with only Ruby as backup, but she had to admit that letting them get away would be even worse.

The two of them were on the roof at the moment, smoke still surrounding them as the explosion from Torchwick's shot slowly dissipated. "Ruby, please, don't let your guard down near your enemies next time."

"Sorry Pyrrha…" the girl mumbled, looking like a scolded puppy. She really was Jaune's little sister – he had the body, she had the personality.

Pyrrha returned her gaze to Torchwick. She was a mess when it came to social interaction, unless it was with sponsors or other money-related stuff. Those were easy, when money was on the line everyone was polite, some were greedy and sneaky, that's all she had to look out for. And she was polite by nature.

Friends, on the other hand, were harder. They weren't polite, they were kind, which meant knowing when politeness went too far and became formal. And they joked around, and knew each other's boundaries and all. She had little experienced in that.

But on the battlefield? She was basically born with sword and shield in hand. Not literally, of course, that would've really hurt. She knew how to fight, and if she had to evaluate herself, she'd say she was more skilled than a lot of the Beacon students. She could probably take on an entire team of her own.

So, backup or not, she kind of doubted Torchwick would be enough to bring her down. Perhaps she should leave the White Fang to Ruby and help out if needed, while she took care of Torchwick.

But she'd still have to be careful.

"Ruby, you handle the White Fang. With your speed, you should be able to fight multiple opponents with relative ease," she ordered her. She knew Ruby was the team leader, but when it came to combat experience, she took the cake, and in battle one listened to the most experienced, not to the leader. Which wasn't her being insubordinate! It was just common sense. Not that she ever had a leader before… "I'll handle Torchwick. After you finished, you can help me out."

"Alright!" Ruby nodded determinedly. She gripped her scythe. "Let's do this! I'll keep them off your back."

Pyrrha smiled. For all her childishness, Ruby actually did have a more serious, combat-oriented side of her personality. She wondered how such a paradox could exist and how could that combat side not seep into her usual behaviour, then she shook her head of such frivolous thoughts.

Ruby sped off before she could reply, leaving her alone on the rooftop, but not for long.

The crimson-haired warrior jumped off the roof, dodging a second blast from Torchwick's cane. She could see the thief narrow his eyes at her.

"Come on you mutts, pick up your weapons and fight!" was all she allowed him to say before she shifted her weapon in rifle and shot him several times as she closed the distance.

He easily parried all of them and then also the downwards slash she started off with after shifting her weapon back to sword. She attacked again, three times in quick succession, before trying to shift her weapon into its javelin mode to try and take him off-guard.

Once again he parried all her attacks, which was odd because his stance wasn't as good as she thought it'd be, which meant he shouldn't have been able to block all of those.

_'Perhaps a Semblance of some kind?'_ she wondered, narrowing her eyes. She was trained to spot unexplained events such as those to try and figure out the Semblance of her opponents. Did it help him block the attacks, was it some kind of force field, or was it enhanced speed?

She attacked again, keeping him on the defensive. _'Judging from how he moves his arms, I'd say it's not a forcefield. Is it enhanced speed then?'_

She deflected an attack from the man and tried to hit his exposed side, but Torchwick managed to sweep her arm to the side with his free hand. So she tried to push him away with her shield, but by then he had retracted the cane and simply side-stepped the bash to attack her again.

_'How can he do that without even glancing at my attacks? His eyesight is slightly blocked by his hair, and he's looking right at me. He doesn't look skilled enough to be able to predict my attack simply by looking in my eyes. And I'm sure I don't telegraph my attacks.'_ Pyrrha jumped back and started firing with her weapon in rifle form, hoping to keep him away. Unfortunately, it didn't work. He closed the distance almost instantly and she was forced to go back to her sword. _'Does his Semblance allow him to know where my attacks will land? This seems to be the most likely option. It's not enhanced speed, he just knows where my attack will be beforehand and prepares for it accordingly. But all Semblances have limits, so what's his? Is there a time limit? Does he get that foreknowledge only a second prior the attack? If so, if I attack quickly, I should be able to bypass his defence.'_

Pyrrha flipped back and shot him again to keep him from using his blasts, giving herself a second or two she used to check how Ruby was going.

The reaper was surrounded by injured or unconscious White Fang grunts. None of them seemed to have any mortal injuries, which was good, and Ruby herself seemed unharmed. She'd been right, the White Fang wasn't skilled enough to be a threat to her. Had she fought Torchwick, he wasn't sure how well it would've ended.

She returned her focus to Torchwick just in time for two more Bullheads to soar overhead and drop a dozen or so more White Fang members onto the battlefield. Three of them seemed to be going for her, probably to try and distract her from Torchwick. Pyrrha wasn't a fool, she knew a direct hit from Torchwick's cane would do a number on her Aura.

_'His Semblance allows him to block most if not all attacks. It's not an offensive ability, so I shouldn't worry about it if I fight those Faunus. It's unlikely for them to have Semblances, so I should probably take them out first and then focus on finding Torchwick's weakness.'_ Pyrrha disengaged from the criminal and rushed toward the White Fang members, two with guns and one with dual swords shaped like a sharp fang.

Pyrrha ducked under the swordsman's first slash and punched him in the midriff, driving the air out of his lungs. A fighter with no air was no fighter. Then she swept his legs out and bashed his head with her shield for good measure, knocking him down, out for the count.

The two gunmen tried to fire at her, but a subtle use of her Semblance made them miss ever-so-slightly, allowing her to reach the first gunner and slash the weapon out of her hands. The woman, who had no visible animal traits, like most others, tried to punch Pyrrha, but it was weak, slow and telegraphed. Pyrrha used her weapon as a pole for pole vaulting and kicked the woman in the chest with both feet. High heels like those she wore might've been dangerous for her balance, but they also added to her kicks' attack power.

A glance back told her that Torchwick and the last gunman were about to shoot at her at the same time. So she used her Semblance to throw her shield and hitting both of them to deflect their hits, while forcing the gunman to shoot at Torchwick. She didn't like to direct her shield so obviously in a fight, but she needed to take them out, and quickly before more arrived.

As predicted, the gunman's shot and her shield both hit Torchwick, but to her surprise -and intrigue-, Torchwick only parried the shot before the shield hit him in the face, knocking him back.

She leapt toward the distracted gunman and dropped it with a quick slash from her weapon. If they had Aura, it was weak, untrained or simply extremely low. As the man fell to the ground, Pyrrha turned toward Torchwick, her eyes widening as she caught sight of him levelling his weapon at Ruby, who had her back to him.

Thinking fast, she threw her shield again, but this time he easily parried her attack, apparently back into his untouchable phase.

_'This mean one of two things. Either he has a time limit, or he can only predict one attack at a time,'_ Pyrrha pondered while she retrieved her shield and rolled away from a blast. _'If it's a time limit, then it has a recharge time of just a few seconds. Highly unlikely, especially considering how long he's kept it up. This leaves the second option, he can only predict one attack at a time… so if I attack with both sword and shield, I should be able to break through his defence.'_

"My, I'm a match for the great Pyrrha Nikos? I'm honoured!" The thief chose that moment to start running his mouth. Although perhaps it was because she hadn't given him a chance to speak earlier thanks to her attack barrage. He blocked a couple more of her attacks before he continued, "Now, I know your mommy must've told you not to talk to strangers, but I'm curious – shouldn't you be at Beacon right now? Is the Invincible Girl actually _skipping_ _school_?"

It was Sunday anyway, so she was allowed to go wherever she wanted, but instead of raising to the bait and replying, Pyrrha chose to try and put her theory into practice, attacking with both sword and shield at the same time.

To her surprise, Torchwick managed to put his cane up to block the sword and kicked her shield to the side, almost pushing her off-balance. Regaining her bearings before he could follow-up with another attack, Pyrrha slashed at him two more times before putting a little distance between them.

_'It seems two attacks is not his limit, even though earlier he could only block one…'_ She blocked Torchwick's cane with her shield and tried to punch her in the face, but she leaned back before trying to bash him with her shield. He blocked, of course, but then she shoved him away, adding a good bit of Polarity to the force of the shield, sending him stumbling a few feet back.

She tried to capitalize of that opening, but it appeared his Semblance was once again active. He easily parried her upward swing before countering with a low kick that almost hit her shin. Fortunately she managed to move her legs out of the way before the attack could connect, even though her follow-up downward slash aimed at the still crouching Torchwick didn't land.

_'Let's see… earlier he parried the White Fang's gun, but not my shield… could it be he can only predict a single person's attacks?'_ To test her theory out, she threw her shield at him, which he dodged with ease. Then she aimed a sweeping kick at his legs while she slashed upwards with her sword and pulled the shield back with her Semblance.

A triple attack like that was hard and dangerous to perform, but Torchwick had been fighting on the defensive in melee, so she was certain he would've tried to parry before countering.

Torchwick parried the sword and managed to lean away from the shield in time, but even though his legs tried to get out of the way of her kick, she still made him fall down.

_'That looked like he was trying to parry all three, but couldn't physically keep up with the right movements. So he did predict all three of them, but he's not skilled or trained enough to block a triple attack like that.'_ Pyrrha shifted Milo in its rifle form and fired at the cane still in Torchwick's hand, using her Polarity to accelerate the bullet to outspeed the man's reaction. Just as she hoped, the shot managed to disarm the criminal, who gained a look of worry. _'Which means that the easiest way to defeat him, right now, is to simply outmatch his physical abilities.'_

Unfortunately, she hadn't taken in consideration all the variables of the equation.

The three Bullheads, which she had forgotten about, opened fire. Pyrrha wasn't an expert when it came to those things, but she was pretty sure that being hit wouldn't end well. She glanced at Ruby to see how she was doing – since she was literally in front of Torchwick, it was unlikely they'd aim at her.

The young reaper seemed to be fine, being surrounded by over two if not three dozens of White Fang. She didn't even appear to be very winded, sign that those White Fang were just as much of a pushover as the ones she fought, which was a comforting notion.

Ruby seemed to have noticed the Bullheads, so she returned her focus to Torchwick just as he rolled to the side and grabbed his cane before aiming it at her.

Pyrrha shot again, throwing his aim slightly off-course and making him hit a suspended container held up by a crane. The ropes broke and the container fell down, narrowly missing both Pyrrha and Ruby, who got out of the way in time.

When Pyrrha glanced back, however, the thief was nowhere in sight.

"Damn it!"

/-/

A minute or so earlier…

Ruby had barely had time to jump off the roof of the building -which sounded very bad out of context but which actually wasn't- before she was faced with five White Fang members, all armed and with the intent to kill.

Too bad they had a will, but they didn't have a way.

She flourished her scythe and immediately took out one of the swordsmen (swordswoman, in that case?), hooking her waist with the blade and using a gunshot to propel her up in the air and then down on the other side of a container. Even if she didn't lose consciousness, it would take her a few seconds to get back, and with her speed, Ruby could do a lot of things in just two seconds.

One down, or well… up, four to go.

She ducked and then sped to the right to avoid the shots of the three gunmen and spun her scythe around, hitting a second swordsman (swordswoman?) with the blunt of the weapon. Despite them being criminals, she still didn't want to kill them, especially when the only crime she knew they committed was attempted theft.

And attempted murder, she guessed, but they weren't trying _that_ hard, now were they?

She stabbed the blade into the ground and vaulted over the shaft, both avoiding more gunfire and kicking the last swordsman square in the face. If he didn't have Aura, then his nose was probably broken. She then moved onto the gunmen, two of them left.

Yeah, one of them had a gun _and_ a sword. She had no idea why would someone use them separately instead of just using a gun-sword, but maybe that was just her inner weapon lover talking. Just because all the best weapons could mecha-shift into either melee or ranged weapons, it didn't mean everyone had to use that kind of weaponry.

Honestly, she was currently glad her opponents had such a lousy taste in weapons. Had they gotten good ones, maybe they would've been able to actually do something.

The two gunmen (gunman and gunwoman?) aimed their rifles at her, but she just used her Semblance to zap behind them, leaving them confused.

"Wait, where did she go?" the man asked, lowering his gun in confusion.

"Did she turn invisible?" wondered the woman, glancing around just in time to see Crescent Rose hurtling toward her face. She cried out in shock before the scythe impacted flesh, sending her flying and bouncing off the concrete a couple of times.

"Yes! Three bounces, new record!" Ruby cheered before catching the last White Fang member's bewildered expression and blushing in embarrassment. "Sorry…"

She couldn't be sure, with the mask and all, but she was pretty sure he snorted a laugh before levelling his rifle at her once again. She beat him to it by shooting at him with Crescent Rose, hitting his right shin and making him cry out in pain as he hopped on one leg, holding the other with both hands and dropping the rifle.

"Okay… so you guys don't have Aura… good to know," she mumbled, taking note of holding back in the future.

"You think?!" he responded, angry and in pain. The moment he shifted his focus on her to yell, he lost his balance and fell face-first into the ground, cursing.

_'Well, that one's taken care of,'_ she thought, kicking away the rifle from the thug who was still writhing on the floor. _'I feel bad, but I can't just stop now.'_

Just then, another dozen or so White Fang members dropped to the ground around her in such cool poses she felt envious for a second, before she remembered she could do better any time she wanted.

Three of them headed towards where Pyrrha was fighting Torchwick, while the remaining eight surrounded her. Another dozen rushed out from behind containers and such. They evidently were the ones who were doing the actual stealing.

Bad move. Very bad move. They should've kept stealing and remained hidden. Now they were at her mercy.

And she had none.

_'Mwuahahahaha!'_

After her adorable mental 'evil cackle', Ruby somersaulted over the swordsman in front of her and landed behind him, in front of two gunwomen, one with a rifle and the other with twin pistols. Too bad they couldn't shoot without hitting their friends too.

A quick swipe of Crescent Rose removed their legs from under them – not literally, obviously, she used the blunt side! Then all she needed was to drop the rear end of the blade in their stomachs, knocking their breaths out. Easy peasy. Crescent Rose was kinda heavy, even though Aura really helped her, so those two should've remained down for a few seconds. Just enough for her to take care of some of the others.

Only eighteen left to go.

She knew blocking attacks would just slow her down, so she used her Semblance to reappear in the middle of the group and then spun around, adding a few gunshots for added propulsion and keeping the scythe's blade low so she didn't accidentally cut off someone's head.

One, two, three, six, thirteen of them went down this way, either smashed into the ground or, more likely, tossed against the metal containers and knocked out.

The remaining five exchanged glances. They all had guns, which was the reason they hadn't been close enough for her to hit, but it was clear she in a complete different league from them.

She had to admit, it was kinda impressive how they still tried, despite knowing they would lose.

To make things harder for her, they decided to spread out so she couldn't take them all down together. On most other people, it would've worked. Unfortunately for them, it wouldn't work on her.

She used a gunshot to propel herself towards the first gunman (gunwoman?) and swept her off her feet and onto her butt before using the momentum to simply land on his her. And her boots were reinforced, too.

The other four opened fire on her, but once again that didn't faze her. The single bullet that managed to hit her just bounced off her Aura, barely felt by the young Huntress.

Ruby then smiled. They had spread out, but… it was time for her secret move!

_'Straight Line Super Rose Scythe Sweeping Rush!'_

She readied her scythe behind her as she activated her Semblance.

_'Name still pending.'_

She shot off with another gunshot. She knew she was basically wasting them, but she had money to waste on weapons and Beacon offered a fund for the students' ammo. She blasted off toward the shooters, who only had a split second to be horrified before they all got mowed down by the scythe trailing behind her.

She slid to a stop before she could hit the container in front of her, happily turning around to watch the unconscious or hurt bodies of the White Fang gunmen. "And that's the last of them!"

And that's when she heard the Bullhead engines and the revving of guns. _'That's not good…'_ she thought to herself, looking up to the two airships heading toward the fight.

She was pretty sure they wouldn't fire unless it was for intimidation only. The chances of hitting their own allies were just too high.

Predictably enough, the salvo of gunfire missed both her and Pyrrha by a mile, impacting on the ground in the middle of the docks. They were just trying to scare them away.

An explosion tore her from such comforting thoughts.

She looked up, only to find the bottom of a metal container hurtling towards her head. She had no idea where that came out from, but she didn't dwell on the how. Instead, she jumped away and hoped the White Fang grunts wouldn't be hit.

"Damn it!" She heard Pyrrha huff from the other side of the container.

"Pyrrha! Are you okay?!" Ruby called out. Despite knowing that Pyrrha could handle herself, a container was still a container.

"I'm fine, but Torchwick got away!"

Ah, now she understood her anger. After allowing herself a brief grunt of irritation, she walked around the container to find Pyrrha still on guard. "What happened? Where did he go?"

"I think he ran off as soon as the container fell, but it is quite possible he had some backup to quickly get him away." Pyrrha sighed and relaxed her stance, straightening. "It's over. Torchwick is a skilled criminal. We don't really have a chance to find him right now."

Ruby lowered her head. "I'm sorry, Pyrrha…"

"What for?"

"Just sorry, I guess." The two of them shared a tiny smile. "Well, at least we defeated these… But that's gonna be seen as vigilantism, isn't it?" Ruby asked, deflating.

"Unfortunately yes." The taller redhead glanced at the unconscious bodies laying around. "I think the police is on its way right now, but perhaps we should give them a call to inform them that there's been trouble at the docks."

Ruby shrugged in agreement before she grinned. "Oh, we just stopped a theft! Jaune and Yang are gonna be so jealous!"

/-/

Jaune was so jealous.

As he scurried in the space between two containers, a White Fang member hanging limp from his jaws -alive!-, Jaune Rose Xiao Long felt oh so envious of his sister Yang, who at the current moment was in Beacon, probably just relaxing or having fun.

Not to say that fighting White Fang wasn't fun, of course! But he wasn't stupid, his parents had told him to try and stay away from the Fang, knowing it would be extremely dangerous for him. A Faunus who could turn other people into animals? The Fang would've _loved_ to have him around to turn all the humans they captured into wolves.

He dropped the woman he had in his mouth and stuck his tongue out in disgust. Why would people apply those horrible 'perfumes' of theirs? On second thought, he didn't want to know. Even Yang did it, though not as much as this chick. At least Ruby didn't see any reason to… although she did put some silver eyeshade or however Yang called it. At least that didn't smell so… unnatural. He shivered in disgust.

He was currently in his normal wolf form because it would keep his Faunus identity a secret and it would make people mistake him for a dog. A fairly large dog with black fur and glowing blue eyes, but a dog nonetheless.

After dropping the Faunus terrorist, he shrank again. _'That's what you get for kicking me and calling me a mutt!'_ he growled at the unconscious woman. _'Not even Cardin calls me that!'_

With another huff of annoyance, Jaune continued on his way. Two Bullheads passed above his head, but with his line of sight limited by the tall containers around him, he had no way of knowing where they went.

_'I'd better take a look around to see what's going on,'_ he mumbled to himself. _'I know Ruby and… uh… Pyrrha? Yeah, Pyrrha. I know that Ruby and Pyrrha can handle themselves, but as their brother and friend I just can't help but worry…'_

"Oh my… guys, look at this cutie!"

Jaune stopped, dread pooling in his stomach as he turned around to see a small group of White Fang members. He must've passed that opening without noticing, lost in his thoughts. _'What a rookie mistake,'_ he scolded himself.

The terrorists seemed to be huddled around a third Bullhead with its hatch open. There must've been five or six of them, and considering the skill of the woman he knocked out earlier, he was ninety percent sure he could take them all on by himself.

However, before he could even grow into his larger form, the sound of artillery fire, probably from the two Bullheads he saw earlier, rang out in the air, followed by a loud explosion.

_'Ruby!'_ Panicking, Jaune turned around to try and reach his sister, ignoring the White Fang behind him. He ran off and turned a corner…

Only to impact his snout right into someone's body.

He looked up, ready for a fight, only to find himself face-to-snout with the criminal Ruby told him she'd fought, Romolo Torchstick. From what he'd been told, Ruby had needed help from a professional Huntress. Professor Goodwitch herself, if he wasn't wrong. Trying to take him on would be foolish.

"What the- Huh?" Torchstick looked down, confused. "What's a dog doing here?" he barked to the White Fang.

They just shrugged. "Who knows? It was just wandering by, then there was an explosion and it got spooked. And ran into you," answered the one with a long, hairless tail trailing behind him.

_'Wait, are they working together? The human-hating organization and a human?'_ Jaune wondered, shocked.

"Oh, are you lost, you little adorable muffin?"

Jaune's brain screeched to a halt.

What the hell had Torchstick just called him?

The criminal, obviously oblivious to his inner breakdown, bent down to pet his head. "Don't you worry, Mr Fluffyfur, Papa Romy is here now! Come on… I got some food for you at home, if you want…"

Torchstick knelt in front of him and scratched him under his chin to make him lift his head before ruffling his fur on his neck. "Oh my god you're just too cute. It's official. I'm adopting you!"

Jaune whined. Really, it was the only sound he felt he could make.

Torchstick grabbed his neck's fur and started tugging him toward the Bullhead, ignoring his struggling. "Yes, I know little one, the Bullhead is big and scary, but don't worry, as soon as we land I'll get you some good food. Way better than anything you could find on the streets!"

Did they not see he was a wolf?

Did they not see he was _not_ a pup?

Did they not see he was obviously not a street dog?

Apparently not.

He tried to squirm out of his grasp. He knew that right now, so surrounded by enemies, turning back to Faunus would be the worst thing he could possibly do. He didn't even have clothes since he wasn't in his combat outfit when he reached the docks, which meant he had to leave all his clothes behind.

He managed to writhe out of Torchstick's hold, and took off in a run. He didn't bother looking back at his 'would-be family' either when he heard them talk.

"It's running away!" one of the White Fang members called out.

"I can see that, you idiot!" The criminal mastermind coughed and returned to use the overly sweet voice he was using earlier. "I get it, you're scared. But don't worry, Papa Romy is gonna take care of you! No more living on the streets!"

Jaune heard the sound of a box being opened, and glanced back. Torchstick had a blue crystal in his hands and was about to throw it at him. And blue was… not fire, not wind… ice!

Wait, _ice?!_

He skidded to a stop and tried to jump to the side to avoid the Dust crystal, but he wasn't fast enough. An ice prison encased him and his surroundings, leaving only his head uncovered. Two terrorists came up to him and lifted him up, bringing him toward the Bullhead.

"Welcome aboard, Mr Fluffyfur!" the criminal mastermind cheerfully greeted him. "You're gonna love your new home!"

As the hatch closed behind them, ironically Jaune's first concern wasn't whether Torchstick was gonna hurt him, but…

_'Oh no, not this flying death trap again!'_

**_I hope you enjoyed this!_**

**_Now, onto the AN for the story. No, I won't stop writing it, don't worry. It's just that I figured out why it was so hard for me to write this. Because I had no idea what I wanted to write next. For all my other stories, I have things planned (oh yes I do), but for this, I just kinda went on the fly. Extension is gonna have an arc focusing on the 'villains' (can we call them villains by now?), DarkerShade is gonna have the return to Vale, Redemption is gonna have the Dead Sands. But this? What about this?_**

**_I never thought about it until i discontinued ViewingTES. To see myself failing SO hard as a writer made me realize that I couldn't continue to write things on the fly, because they got too chaotic. I have to keep my creativity working, but stop it from continuously adding onto my stories. And having things pre-planned also helps when I have Writer's Block. (Why do we write it as if it's some kind of actual disease? *insert shrugging emoji here*)_**

**_This can be seen in this chapter. Up until now, I dragged on some parts of the humour that were getting old. Going back, I can now see it. For something I put a lot of focus on, it dragged on for way too much. I may be overly self-critical but this is true. This chapter focuses on the fight, and has a little Jaune in it where Jaune shows not to be as oblivious as the previous chapters made him out to be. He still knows to try and avoid confrontation when possible._**

**_Pyrrha gets her chance to shine by matching and figuring out Torchwick's Semblance with minimal use of her own, which means she is as capable as Sun and Blake combined if not more, but that's kind of a given. Ruby shows not to be just an over-the-top idiot like I've unfortunately started to paint her as in the last chapters, as she is instead smart fighter with a sharp intellect who can fight to incapacitate without many problems despite the deadliness of her weapon._**

**_And Torchwick gets both a little focus... and a new name! Romolo Torchstick... Let's see who will get their name twisted next!_**

**_Until next time,_**

**_Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh_**


	11. Guest or Prisoner

Ruby was feeling pretty good about herself, if she had to be honest. After all, it isn't every day one fought Roman flipping Torchwick and not only held her own, but actually sent him running with his tail between his legs. Well, that had been Pyrrha, but still.

Her day had started off pretty badly. Between Jaune in the infirmary (although he had been about to be released anyway), being called by the Headmaster to talk about what had happened in the Forever Fall Forest, solving the misunderstanding between her and Pyrrha, hiding from Jaune to stop him from enacting bloody vengeance on Cardin for his attack to his 'pack', finding Torchwick and fighting him and his goons, and eventually going back to Beacon with Pyrrha, probably heading toward the scolding of a lifetime, she could easily say she'd just had a stressful day. Fortunately, winning said fight against the criminal master had markedly improved her mood, so much that she could almost forget about the lecture she was sure she'd soon receive.

Almost.

She was also kinda surprised Jaune hadn't showed up at the docks. True, she preferred it this way, because it meant Jaune was safe and sound in Beacon, but she found it odd he hadn't tracked her down. Perhaps he had gone back once he had lost her smell at the docks thanks to the awful stench of fish and rotten fish. Anyway, she was actually glad he hadn't joined the fight, since she had it perfectly under control. And besides, Pyrrha had been really helpful.

Speaking of which…

"Hey, Pyrrha?" she called out as the two redheads walked out of the airship that had led them back to Beacon, following a positively seething Glynda Goodwitch who had obviously not appreciated their little stunt at the docks. Though what was she supposed to do, just let Torchwick steal the Dust and get away?

"Yes?" The champion of Mistral glanced at her, though it was obvious she was still lost in her own thoughts and was only replying out of politeness.

"I'm really sorry for how I treated you." Ruby shuffled her feet slightly, a nervous habit of hers whenever she had nothing to do and was talking to someone. She was still feeling really bad about the whole misunderstanding, and after Pyrrha helped her at the docks, that guilt had only increased. How could she have mistaken someone as nice as her for an assassin? "I've always been really overprotective of Jaune, even though he's my big brother…"

"Ruby, I told you it's fine," the taller girl reminded her, dispelling her previous thoughts to place a hand on her shoulder. "You apologized, and that's all I could ever ask for. You already did enough, admitting you were wrong to the person you wronged. You don't need to beat yourself up about it."

Ruby shook her head with a sigh. "I know, but I really acted out of line. My parents were overprotective to the point of being paranoid when it came to Jaune. They were always worried that someone would come and take him away. And I guess it rubbed off on me too."

"Well, worrying is what a parent does, or so I've been told by my mother," Pyrrha smiled gently, remembering the woman who had seen her off back at Argus.

"It's not that. They never worried so much about me, about Yang even less – they were more worried about what damage she caused." She blushed in embarrassment when she realized she'd let slip more than she intended to. "Please don't tell her I told you."

Pyrrha laughed.

"It's just… Jaune is a Faunus, and with his Semblance, Mom said there were people who would try and take him away to use him for themselves." Her voice lowered. "And I think they've tried already. There would be days when Mom or Dad would come home much later than normal, all scruffy as if they'd fought someone or something, and they would never tell anyone."

The Amazon's laughter died out almost immediately as she stared down at the younger girl with concern in her green eyes. "You mean someone already tried and failed? Was it reported to the police? Why did I not hear about it? That sounds like something that would make it to the news…"

Ruby just shrugged helplessly. "No idea. But my parents are both very strong Hunters, so I think the threat was just marked as 'dealt with'. Plus informing the police of why they wanted Jaune would mean risking more people finding out and using that information for evil."

"But who would do that?"

"Anyone who has anything to do with Faunus, really," Ruby said as she looked down sadly. "Faunus supporters wanted him to join them as a symbol for the Faunus. Human supremacists wanted to kidnap him and use him to symbolize how Faunus are just animals."

"That's horrible!" Pyrrha exclaimed, bringing a hand up to cover her mouth. "Now I see why you were so overprotective of him…"

Ruby shrugged slightly, a blush creeping up on her face. "Yeah… I've been sheltered a lot, so I couldn't really tell you were genuinely interested in making friends. I thought you were an assassin or something…"

"Ms Rose, Ms Nikos, please refrain from talking," Goodwitch snapped at them from her position in front of the duo, barely glancing back as she crossed the Beacon courtyard with long strides. "I hope you two realize that what you've done is not something to be proud of, but an actual felony. A crime. You two performed acts of vigilantism without permission from a teacher and without your temporary Hunter Licenses. Hadn't it been for my presence, the police would've brought you in for vigilantism! You should be reflecting on what you've done, girls, not chat away like nothing happened or worse, like you did something good!"

The two Huntresses-in-training shrank under her withering glance. "Sorry, Professor Goodwitch," Ruby said meekly.

"Now let's go. We'll discuss this matter further in my office." The stern woman marched on, looking like she was just a mere wand's wave away from using her Telekinesis to drag them along.

"Ruby!" a relieved cry echoed in the courtyard, and Goodwitch stiffened, her fingers tightening around her riding crop. Ruby was actually impressed by her self-control – she had actually thought she would've just slammed the owner of the voice into a wall and kept walking.

Yang appeared in their sight, slightly dishevelled and panting, running across the courtyard at record speeds. So fast, in fact, that Ruby could swear she had somehow gained her Semblance. The only other times she saw her move that fast was when she needed to ditch her with Jaune to go hang out with friends.

"Yang!" The only reason why she didn't rush out to meet her sister halfway was Goodwitch's -frankly terrifying- glare. The woman was scowling at her with a glare that clearly told her that even though she would allow Yang to check on her, the interruption would only worsen the lecture ahead.

The blonde student reached the trio in record time, panting lightly from the sprint. "Oh gods, Ruby, I was so worried! Why'd you sneak off like that!"

She had at least the decency to look embarrassed, even though she didn't regret her actions and she had only done so to prevent Jaune from doing something Goodwitch would make him regret later. "Sorry Yang, I wasn't exactly planning on getting into a fight with Torchwick and-"

"WHAT?!"

Goodwitch rubbed the bridge of her nose, pushing her glasses down a bit, with an annoyed expression. _'They don't pay me enough for this.'_

"What do you mean, you fought Torchwick!" Yang panicked, grabbing her sister and checking her over for any injuries.

Pyrrha, standing a bit to the side, watched on in slight amusement and endearment, biting her lip to keep herself from chuckling. It was really nice to see how much Yang cared for the sister, even though the middle of the Beacon courtyard probably wasn't the right place for a health check. It kind of reminded her of her mother and how she fussed over her whenever she called, even though it had already been a few weeks and nothing had gone poorly… well, except the huge misunderstanding with Ruby and, by extension, Jaune, of course.

"Yang, I'm fine!" Ruby pushed her older sister off of her with an annoyed look. The blonde looked like she was about to argue, but then she caught sight of Pyrrha -having probably overlooked her earlier due to her worry- and immediately straightened up, putting on a cheerfully wide smile. Ruby groaned. "Yaaang, stop trying to show off."

"I'm not showing off, Ruby," Yang replied, though the little glare she sent her gave her away. She quickly wiped it off, though, and continued to smile coolly and confidently, as if she hadn't just freaked out over her sister's absence.

_'Why does she have to be a fan of Pyrrha's? Now it's all about impressing her!'_ Ruby complained in her mind, knowing better than to voice those thoughts aloud while Yang was still within earshot. So, she decided to change the topic entirely, instead. "So, Yang, has Jaune calmed down yet? You know, from wanting to kill Cardin?"

"Huh?" Yang lost her smile and frowned, as if she didn't know what she was talking about. Ruby winced.

That was bad, Ruby knew that if she had that expression on, it meant that she didn't know, and if she didn't know, then chances were that Jaune _hadn't_ calmed down yet, and Cardin was probably still in grave danger. Jaune's animal instincts could be really strong at times. He knew how to contain them most of the time, but the rarer ones, the ones he rarely got to experience and thus didn't have much practice with, could still be quite the problem. Just ask Blake.

"No idea, you know how he gets. He went to check up on you. Isn't he with you?" Her eyes widened. "Did something happen? Is he at the hospital?!"

"Mr Rose Xiao Long wasn't with us," Goodwitch informed her coolly, crossing her arms with a glare. _'If he really did go to check up on Ms Rose, it is possible he couldn't find her and will simply return to school later today… but there is a chance he might've been captured by Torchwick. If that's the case, then he's in grave danger…'_

A look of realization dawned over Ruby's face as she turned to stare at her sister, who had a similar look of horror. "Yang… If he isn't here and he wasn't with us… then… where is Jaune?"

/-/

Jaune was in heaven.

Well, not literally of course. The room he was in was definitely well-kept and clean, but even he wouldn't go as far as calling it heaven. Its walls had a couple of stains whose smells he couldn't quite identify – grease of some sort, but they were too old to determine its origin. The furniture was minimal, with just a sofa and a couple of couches. A low coffee table sat in front of the sofa, but he hadn't seen a single coffee cup or mug in the whole room, so he suspected it was just for show. Or maybe it was used for snacks when watching TV. Speaking of which, there was a large black flat screen directly across the room from the sofa, and Jaune would've _paid_ to be able to turn it on and flip through the channels as he waited for Thorclick or whatever his name was to come back.

Thorclick was going to be a problem.

While he could appreciate the room he was currently kept in, at least for the fact it didn't move and tumble like a Bullhead, he really didn't want to remain there for long. But he wasn't so sure Thorclick was gonna just let him go.

While the man had seemed to absolutely _adore_ him, he didn't know whether it was genuine or not. Summer had always warned him against strangers and he wasn't one to ignore Summer's warnings. Yang was. Ruby, sometimes. But he knew better than to ignore her warnings, especially when it came to the White Fang. _'I knew I shouldn't have gone after Ruby! She was perfectly fine on her own, and now I got myself captured! Damn it, I was an idiot! Pyrrha might've made her feel uncomfortable, but she looked cool. Yang loved her, at least. And Yang said she's super-strong, so she could've protected Ruby!'_

He whined, leaning his snout on his front paws as he slid down on the ground. _'I should've thought this out more. It was so dumb of me to just follow Ruby to the docks without a second thought, and even dumber to try to run away from Thorclick without a plan. He captured me like it was nothing, and now the only thing that keeps him from killing me, is the fact that he thinks I'm a dog!'_ He grumbled. _'Which isn't even true, anyway, because I'm a wolf! So now I can't even turn back into human, unless I want to be killed of course.'_ He snorted sarcastically. _'For some reason I think I'll stick to wolf.'_

_'Now I'll have to rely entirely on the others to save me. Ruby and Yang will have realized I'm missing by now, or they will soon. Once they do, they'll alert the teach- oh, what am I saying, my mate will zip right through town to find me.'_ His eyes widened as he realized what he had just called Ruby. _'Packmate! Sister! Not romantic mate! Not at all!'_ He vigorously shook his head to try and erase the memory of that thought. _'Focus! Focus! No time to think_ _about cute- I'm hopeless. Okay. Escape plan! Let's focus!'_

He shook his head one more time before looking around. The room he was kept in didn't offer many escape routes or tools. There was only one door, which was likely guarded. He had distinctly heard Thorclick telling someone to keep guard and keep everyone but him and someone called New or something away. And the only thing he could use was the TV, to smash down and make some noise so that people would investigate and open the door to freedom.

It was a terrible plan.

Jaune got to his feet… well, paws… and began to pace around the room. There really was very little he could use. There wasn't even a window, for Dust's sake! All the light in the room came from the lightbulb, and he couldn't escape through _that_. Really, unless he used his giant wolf form and tore down a wall, the door was his only way out. And transforming now would probably just be a death sentence. He didn't know where he was, as he had too busy being sick on the way back to pay attention to where they had brought him, something he now regretted. And he didn't know how many White Fang members there were out there.

For all he knew, he could've been in their top-secret hideout, surrounded by hundreds of White Fang inside automatic rotating bazooka turrets or something.

_'Think, Jaune, think!'_ he growled to himself, frustrated. He knew he wasn't as dumb as some people thought – blonde didn't mean dumb, after all – but at the moment he really felt stupid, even though there wasn't much he could do. _'What would Ruby do? She's analyse the situation… which I already did and which hasn't helped at all. It just showed me just how screwed I am. Then she'd… rush recklessly into action without any regard for personal safety or self-preservation.'_

_'…'_

_'…'_

_'Yeah, I think I'm gonna try this my way.'_ Jaune kept pacing before stopping by the door, ears perking up as he heard someone approaching. _'Are they coming here? Is this my chance? What if it's that Thorclick guy, he seemed pretty strong, and- Wait is that lamb I smell?'_ He sniffed the air and began to salivate as his tail wagged happily. _'Oh god yes it's lamb, it's my favourite! Even though Ruby is always sad when we eat it, because she feels sorry for the poor thing. As if I should feel sorry for lambs, heh. Please let it be for me, please let it be for me!'_

The steps grew closer and closer, until they finally stopped right in front of the door. He heard another set of footsteps walk away, much heavier than the first yet somehow quieter. He didn't have much time to think about it, as the door soon began to open.

Jaune took a few steps back, readying himself. For what… he wasn't so sure.

However, as the door opened fully, he was taken aback. Instead of Thorclick's tall, white-coated, orange-haired figure, a much smaller, and _much much much_ more beautiful sight presented itself. A girl -probably a woman, but she did look really young- with long pink and brown hair, split down the middle, heterochromatic pink and brown eyes, wearing a pink, brown and cream-coloured outfit that really fit her.

Jaune whined in surprise and curiosity, tilting his head sideways.

The mysterious girl -who was probably the person Thorclick had allowed to come, New was it?- smiled cheerfully at him and offered him a plate loaded full of steaming, delicious-looking, mouth-watering cooked lamb.

His tail began to wag anew as he panted happily.

_**Ten minutes later…**_

Really, he _knew_ that girl was good news. And not just for the absolutely delectable lamb, which had been extremely appreciated, mind you. The girl, who had introduced herself as Nio, apparently adored him just as much as Torlick did and hadn't hesitated in showering him with heartfelt affection, kissing him on what could be counted as his forehead and stroking him for a good five uninterrupted minutes.

Really, the fact that she'd stroked him first and fed him second was all he could complain about.

_'Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhh!'_ he cheered mentally as he ran around the room. Due to both his Aura and his natural strength, he wasn't slowed down in the slightest by Nio riding on his back, like Ruby still did every now and then. Not Yang though, she considered herself too grown-up to play like that. But Nio seemed a pro even though she'd never played with him before, and he was really happy about that, since it meant he would get to go all out and have fun without having to worry about her falling off.

Not that he should've worried anyway, since she still was one of his captors, but it was still nice to play with someone from time to time. Being human was so boring sometimes. They were so serious all the time, even when there was no need. At least Ruby understood!

And this girl. Had he already mentioned just how much fun this girl was?

_'Escape plans will have to wait!'_ he panted happily as he jumped over the couch and down on the other side, an easy feat considering how used he was to it. _'First I'm burning off all that accumulated energy from being forced to stay still in Beacon. Then I'll think of a plan and escape this place!'_

As he kept running around, bouncing off walls and furniture alike, not caring in the slightest if he scratched something (Goodwitch was always _so_ mad whenever he did that in his dorm!) or even if he broke something. Nio seemed to be enjoying herself and she was apparently someone who knew Torlick, which meant if she was okay with it, then it was okay for him too.

_'Really, the only thing not completely amazing about this girl is the fact that she's with Torlick!'_ he exclaimed in his mind. He'd have to hang out with her more often. _'That, and the fact I've yet to hear her voice. Is it because she's afraid of throwing up if she opens her mouth?!'_ The thought immediately killed his fun. His father, the mate of his alpha, was always like that whenever he convinced him to take a ride, usually after the rest of the family had gone too. _'If that's why, then I have to stop immediately!'_ he thought panicked. _'I don't want to upset the nice girl! She might end up like Weiss!'_

With that in mind, he took his decision.

His front paws slammed into the floor, sinking his claws into it, and all the momentum he'd previously accumulated was thus stopped. He gritted his fangs at the sudden strain in his front legs, but it was worth it. Taiyang would've been sick whenever he stopped quickly or not, and he assumed the girl was the same, so he'd decided to just try to make the ride last as little as possible by stopping abruptly.

However, he hadn't calculated for the girl not to be able to stop herself similarly. Still holding onto his fur, Nio flew over his head and slammed on the ground, hands still fisted in the fur of his neck and butt in the air. Jaune found this new position to be highly uncomfortable – not just because she was pulling on his fur, but also because his nose had ended up right between her legs, and while he _was_ indeed a wolf, he didn't go around smelling people's behinds!

Well, not any more, but that was when he was very little and still learning. Plus, smelling Uncle Qrow's had taught him to never do that again.

And at that moment, the door opened and Jaune froze.

He slowly glanced at the threshold to see Torlick's tall figure, clad in a white trench coat and black slacks. He didn't have his cane with him, but the bowler hat was on his head and a cigar hung from his mouth.

Or well, used to hang from his mouth. Until he took in the sight in front of him and his mouth dropped open, thus letting the cigar fall in the process.

The cigar twisted in the air, the red-hot burnt end still smoking slightly as the small brown tube flipped around and fell down and down, until it hit the floor and gently bounced off, resigning himself to a cold, unburned fate, one where it would lay there, waiting until someone decided to clean that room, when it would be picked up and tossed in the trash, and then brought out and… go somewhere… with all the rest of the trash… and then they would do… things… and recycle it.

Right?

Well, whatever its fate, Jaune currently envied that cigar. A lot. Because even going out with the trash and being recycled sounded better than being with Torlick.

"WHAT IS THIS!?"

Jaune whimpered and backpedalled quickly, ignoring the fact that Nio was still somehow holding onto him and was thus being dragged on the floor. Her previously crouched position had now been inverted into a laying position, though her arms must've been really strained for still holding onto him. His back hit the wall and he folded into himself, still whining softly. _'I knew he was going to kill me!'_

"Well, Neo?" Torlick strode over in just three long steps and glared down at the sweet bicoloured girl, who blinked up at him, as if not understanding what he meant. "Since when you're into this?!"

The girl's eyes went wide before a fearsome, furious scowl took over her features. She stood up and brushed herself off, glaring right back at Torlick before crossing her arms over her chest and shaking her head.

Jaune blinked too, confused. So… Torlick wasn't mad at him? He got to live another day?

He just contented himself with watching as the two degenerated into a one-sidedly-spoken argument. Strangely enough, Nio still hadn't made any noise.

**_Alright, explanation time._**

**_You might be wondering - where the hell were you in the past three weeks? Well, working. A lot has happened._**

**_My fridge broke and it took me three weeks to get a replacement. My little brother is throwing more tantrums than ever on the smallest things (like the size of the bubbles he can make with his bubble gun, which he broke because he wasn't happy, btw), and for the past month I've been working on a project for my Dad that I finished yesterday, which had put a lot of pressure on me (not my Dad's fault, it was my own expectations)._**

**_All of this meant that for my mental sanity, I limited myself to reading stories, instead of writing (still tried a little, but as you can see with no success). In fact, I spent my free time chatting with friends and reading the My Hero Academia reaction stories by Bandit235, on Wattpad._**

**_This chapter is also significantly shorter than the average, at just 4k, but it's filler anyway and so you didn't miss much. Next chapter is going to be more interesting anyway, with meeting a few new faces and all._**

**_Until next time,_**

**_Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh_**


End file.
